


Daimons

by stargatefan_archivist



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action/Adventure, Episode: s05e21 Meridian, Episode: s06e22 Full Circle, Episode: s07e02 Homecoming, Episode: s07e14 Fallout, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-14
Updated: 2009-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-17 17:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11856009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargatefan_archivist/pseuds/stargatefan_archivist
Summary: Jonas invites Daniel to join an excavation on Kelowna





	Daimons

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Yuma, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [Stargatefan.com](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Stargatefan.com). To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [StargateFan Archive Collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/StargateFan_Archive_Collection).

Daniel crouched down, a stack of books balanced in his arms. He eased them to the floor. “I want to go, Jack. I don’t get to do field research as much as I’d like, and I had a good time working with Jonas. It’ll be nice to see him again. It’s been a long time.” Taking a book off the pile, he opened the canvas duffel bag beside him and laid it in the bottom, easing it to one side.

“You had a good time with Jonas? As is ‘I had fun last year evading capture on Anubis’s ship with no escape, while facing discovery and death?’” Jack crossed his arms, leaning back against an open section of wall—something that was difficult to find in Daniel’s overcrowded office. 

Daniel paused, another book in hand. “Well, I was thinking that we liked the same books, but….” He placed the one he held next to the first and thought back to that first mission after his return, the exhilaration that had been so at odds with his life on Vis Uban. That exhilaration was mixed with confusion and, yes, some moments of fear, but…. “I did actually—have fun, I mean. Admittedly, I’m using ‘fun’ in a roller coaster sort of way, not like ‘that was a happy time.' Jonas has a point of view on…” He waved a hand toward his collection of off world artifacts. “...all this that’s, well…a little different than mine. That’s not always a bad thing.” He flashed a smile as he went back to packing the books. “Besides, there was an escape, with good results for you, I might add.” Slipping the last of the books into the bag, he rose and took his laptop from the desk. 

“Yeah, well, there was, and Jonas is okay, but—” Jack pushed off the wall and moved to stand in front of the desk. The lines deepened around his eyes. “I can’t believe you want to go back to Kelowna.” 

“It’s… just a place, Jack. Like the infirmary is a place and ascension is a place—well, not a place, more like a state of being, but you know what I mean….” Daniel knelt down on one knee and widened the top of the bag as he slipped the laptop inside. “And that was a long time ago. Things have changed on Kelowna. They may not have learned much from the…accident, but that chain reaction from the naquadria test….” He looked up at Jack. “You don’t expect me to avoid the infirmary. Not that I could do that without convincing them to do physicals in the locker room.” Lifting an eyebrow, Daniel moved the computer into a better position in the bag. “There’s no such thing as a place without history, good and bad.” 

“Maybe, but those people—” 

“Are just people. Some of them stupid, irritating people, but people, nonetheless. They’re trying to survive, and having had the galaxy show up on their doorstep unexpectedly hasn’t helped.” 

“They’re damned ungrateful bastards!”

Shaking his head, Daniel looked at Jack. “I didn’t do it for the high council—and you don’t let people die just because you don’t like them. Oh, wait! You know that! You went to Kelowna when Anubis showed up…to help those ungrateful bastards.” 

“Lay it on a little thicker, Daniel—I might not get it!” Jack shoved his hands in his pockets. “Okay. I did help them—we all did, but that was _Anubis_! It doesn’t mean that—” 

Daniel pushed himself to his feet abruptly, turned back to his desk, and wrenched open a drawer. “You have to stop blaming a whole planet for a decision I made!” Irritation rushed through him. He knew some of it was misplaced. This wasn’t something he really enjoyed talking about. Thinking about the explosion led to thinking about what came after, and he didn’t want to do that, even if he didn’t remember the worst of it—the last day. He didn’t remember, didn’t want to remember, and didn’t want to talk about it just in case he did. He really wished Jack would leave it alone. 

He took a breath, then started picking up pens, pencils, small things he might need, and putting them in a plastic bag. He didn’t want to take the chance of ink leaking into his books. Tossing the bag of pens into the duffel, he bent down to pull the zipper closed with a sharp tug. “If I hadn’t done anything, I would have died in the explosion, I wouldn’t have ascended, and I wouldn’t be here now. We’re all alive.” Daniel straightened and looked at Jack. “So…let it go, okay?” 

Jack stared at him then looked away, shaking his head. “Can I blame them for electing idiots?”

“Yes, but that happens here, too.”

“Don’t I know it.” Jack looked at him again, eyebrows pulled low. “You need backup. I’m sending a team of Marines with you.” 

Daniel dropped his chin and looked over the top of his glasses. “No Marines. It’s just an archeological expedition. I have some time off. This is how I want to spend it. Jonas will be there—so there’s backup, and you know I’ll ask for help if I need it.”

“Yeah, I do…. Just….” Jack pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and looked at his feet. 

“I’ll be careful.”

His eyebrows rose as his gaze went back to Daniel. “Apparently, that’s all I can ask.” 

Daniel smiled. “Lay it on a little thicker. I might not get it.” He picked up his gear.

“Daniel?”

“Yes, Jack?”

“The Beretta goes, too.” 

********************************************************************

Daniel emerged on the far side of the event horizon to find himself in an unfamiliar room—they’d moved the Stargate. It was now housed in what looked like a cross between the lobby of a museum and a prison: marble floors and walls, with only barred windows set high on the walls and a single door breaking the expanse of white stone. 

In front of that door stood Jonas Quinn, a grin on his face, and an unnervingly large group of guards standing armed and ready behind him. Daniel decided the guards couldn’t be there for him, not with the happy expression on Jonas’s face. Jonas wasn’t that upbeat. 

“Nice place, Jonas.” He looked up at the light streaming in through the windows, making the marble seem to glow. “Very impressive. A little stark, but impressive.”

“The council made security a priority. I’ve suggested adding an iris, but it seems to take forever to push things through the bureaucracy with three countries involved. The engineers are still discussing alloys.” 

Jonas came forward and took Daniel’s bag of books, leaving him with only his pack to carry. “Wow. Heavy.” He slung the bag over one shoulder. “When they moved the ‘gate from the bunker, they decided to put it here in the armory.” He gave a nod toward the guards. “These guys are just the first layer of defense. There’s no reason to expect any trouble, but now they know what can happen.” 

“I can see why they might be a little concerned.” Daniel pointed to the bag of books. “I wasn’t sure what we might need, so I brought a wide range of reference materials—languages and some books on mythology. We probably won’t need those, but since Thanos is one of the few Goa’uld we’ve run across who either influenced Greek mythology, or took on the persona of an existing Greek god, I decided to bring them.” 

Jonas grinned again, glanced down at the bag that hung against his hip, and gave it a pat. “Great! I can’t wait—I miss your library.” The guards moved out of the way as Jonas turned to lead them from the room. “Things are a little behind schedule. They were still excavating when I left the site to report to the council. Do you think you might be able to stay longer than the week we’d planned?”

Walking beside Jonas, Daniel examined the wide marble hall through which they were passing. No windows here—just guards. Lots and lots of guards. “Maybe. I can check, if it comes to that, but—excavating? I thought this was another lab.”

“Well, we think it was a lab, based on the references to it on the data crystal, but it may not have been built for that purpose, and we know that it was abandoned when Thanos built the lab that exploded. Too bad we can’t get our hands on the things that were in that one! Of course, then Thanos wouldn’t be dead—probably—there wouldn’t be any naquadria, and you wouldn’t have hyperdrives for your ships. Anyway, it’s a good exercise in joint operations between all the countries of the council. All we’re really hoping for is maybe some scientific equipment or data crystals. The thing is, it was almost completely buried—right up to the roof.” 

“Buried? That’s a bit ominous, don’t you think?”

“It was built at the base of a mountain, in what was probably a small valley. We have evidence that the initial explosion that created the naquadria triggered seismic activity throughout this area. It wouldn’t be the only place where landslides occurred. We’ve been digging a ramp down to where the door should be, and shoring up the sides as we go. They were getting pretty close when I left.” 

They’d reached the building’s entrance. Daniel wasn’t at all surprised to see another large group of guards, one of whom gave him a nod, and held a clipboard out to Jonas. He nodded in return, his gaze drifting over the rest of the group. “So what can I help you with?”

Jonas took and signed the papers. “We found some artifacts—stones with writing, symbols. It has similarities to Kelownan, just enough to drive me crazy. I’m hoping you’ll be able to figure out what they say. I could have gone to the SGC and asked to do some research, but…. I know how much I’m enjoying this—archeology with no shooting. I thought you might like it, too.”

Looking away from the guards and back to Jonas, Daniel raised his eyebrows. “I’m here to enjoy myself?”

Jonas smiled. “I know that’s a pretty radical idea at the SGC, but—” 

“No, I… I’m definitely not complaining. I just…. This is new.” 

“Yeah. Too bad, huh?” Jonas smiled and shook his head.

They exited the building into a wave of heat and blinding sunlight. Kelowna's summer. Glancing back at the door as it shut behind them, Daniel asked, “Uh, Jonas… That was a lot of security. Is that…routine, or is something else going on?” He really hoped trouble wasn’t brewing between Langaran factions again. 

Jonas tilted his head. “Something else? You mean the Goa’uld?”

Daniel shook his head and pulled out his clip-on sunglasses. 

“Oh! You mean between Kelowna, the Andari Federation, and the Terranians—no, no problems there. That’s going pretty well, actually. There’s a lot of attitude sometimes, but everyone is managing to work together, for the most part. The security is _because_ they’re working together—troops from all three countries guarding the Stargate. Amazing, right?” 

He waved a hand toward the entrance. “Of course, Terranian and Andari troops only operate here, in this building. There was a lot of concern in the Kelownan government about foreign troops on Kelownan soil, but the joint council came to an agreement.” Jonas‘s forehead creased. “Boy, that took meeting after meeting, and then some more meetings. Yelling, too.” 

“That’s pretty much how their negotiations on Earth went, too, back when they started the naquadria chain reaction. Imminent destruction of the planet didn’t seem to make a difference.” Daniel was relieved, but Jonas seemed…. “You hate it.”

“Yeah. But you know how it is.” 

“I do, actually.” His gaze wandered over the façade of the armory. The architecture showed more of a Greek influence than he’d seen previously. He stepped back to get a better look at the Doric entablature above broad columns. 

“Daniel?”

“Hmmm?” Very nice. Simple and elegant. Daniel pointed at the entrance. “Greek architectural influence, like your written language. But your writing has elements that aren’t Greek, other symbols overlaying the Greek ones…. Amalgamation? Something older…. Maybe Linear B—no, wrong shapes…”

Jonas examined the carvings on the frieze above. “That could relate to the symbols we found, couldn’t it?” His gaze came back to Daniel. “We should probably get going.”

“What…? Oh, sure…. Sorry. I don’t usually have time to just…look at things.” 

“I’d be happy to let you look as much as you’d like, but it’s a long drive.” Jonas gestured to a jeep-like vehicle parked a few feet away. It was more rounded in shape, and had larger tires in relation to the frame, but it had the same utilitarian look, open top, and storage in the back.

Daniel stepped over to the vehicle, opened the door, and shrugged off his pack. He put it on the floor of the passenger seat. “Just a second…. I brought you something.” Pulling a paper bag from the pack, he reached across the seat to hand it to Jonas. “Sam and Teal’c sent you some things, too. Those can wait, but these might get damaged.”

Jonas opened the bag, and looked inside. He turned to Daniel and grinned. “Bananas. Thanks!” 

“I thought you might be missing them. Sam mentioned you’re a big fan of deep fry, but onion rings and fries don’t travel well.” Daniel fastened the pack again, heaved it into the back next to the books, and got in. “Okay, let’s go see what Thanos was up to.” 

As they drove through the city, the crowded streets lined with red stone skyscrapers and lower brick buildings gave way to factories. A lot of the buildings were accented with lighter colored stone and some had columns similar to the building that now housed the Stargate. There was still visible damage from Anubis’s attack, although most of the rubble had been cleared over the last year—year and a bit, really—especially in the city center. 

Daniel watched with a combination of interest and…something else. Some feeling he was having a hard time pinning down. He believed what he’d told Jack. His actions were his own, and there was no place that was entirely ‘good’, but…. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop, a giant earth leveling, disastrous shoe. Did the people on these streets know how close their government had come to destroying them? And…how many governments were significantly different? Oh, that was a cheerful thought. 

He turned to Jonas, who was driving with one hand, and eating a banana. “So, why don’t you fill me in on what you’ve found so far?”

“The stones—the ones I was telling you about—were on the surface where the building was buried. I don’t see how there can be a connection to the structure itself, but it’s weird. There wasn’t any settlement out there, not that we have on record. They couldn’t have come from the building, or they’d be buried, too. That’s it. Nothing else so far, but I wouldn’t expect to find much in soil deposited by a landslide. We might find more when we get closer to what would have been ground level. And I hope we find something interesting inside.”

“And you said all three countries are involved?”

Jonas nodded, swallowing the last of the banana, and tossed the peel into the bag. “It’s a first. Although there seems to be a lot of competition between them that gets ugly sometimes.” 

“So they’re just like academics on Earth?”

“Well, I didn’t notice that much. I thought everyone was pretty friendly, once they got used to me.” He glanced at Daniel. “This will be kind of the same, just more so.” Jonas adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. “They’ll warm up to you once you’re there.” 

Seeing the way Jonas’s mouth tightened, Daniel wasn’t so sure about that. “I’m not going to like this at all, am I?” 

********************************************************************

It was almost midday when they pulled into the expedition site, stopping next to a number of vehicles. After close to five hours of driving down dusty, rut-damaged roads, Daniel was stiff, sweaty, and covered with dirt. He stretched as he looked around the camp. The dig was set in a flat area between the hills and gullies that dominated the landscape, jagged mountains rising abruptly behind them. On the other side of the field, a large number of tents, which looked remarkably like canvas, flapped and stirred in the breeze. Apart from minor differences in tent style, it could have been an excavation on Earth, several decades ago. 

In the shade cast by of one of the tents, a group of men played a game of chance. A shift of excavation workers relaxing on their down-time, Daniel guessed. They were throwing something, but he couldn’t see what. _Kuboi_ , the Greek precursor to modern dice? Maybe knucklebones— _astragaloi_. If they were knucklebones, were they the bones of sheep or goats as the Greeks used? Did the Kelownans have ruminants descended from Earth stock? There was so much about Kelowna that he hadn’t had the chance to learn, things that hadn’t come up on that first visit. And after…. Well, he could change that now. Daniel felt a rush of anticipation, something he hadn’t felt about Kelowna for a long time.

Activity around a large central tent drew Daniel’s attention, as did the smells of cooking wafting across the compound. Garlic had clearly been brought from Earth by their forbearers. A large group of people emerged, stopping to stare. One man raised a hand in greeting to Jonas. 

Reaching into the back of the vehicle, Daniel pulled out his pack just as Jonas came around the front, carrying the books and his bag of fruit. Daniel made a small motion toward the waiting group. “Your colleagues?”

Jonas saw the raised hand in the crowd and waved back. “Oh, good. I can introduce you to a bunch of them at once. That’s easier.”

It may have been easier for Jonas, but the names started to get lost for Daniel. A couple of people stood out, most notably Eldon Masera, a Kelownan language specialist who was significantly older than anyone else in the rest of the group, grey-haired and round-bodied. He’d done most of the work on the data crystal, Jonas said. Daniel wondered if Masera thought he had come to interfere with the dig, maybe even take over, because the man really didn't look happy.

Reynold Gent, a Terranian, whose specialty was early Langaran cultures, seemed to have a similar attitude, but he didn’t look suspicious, so much as…dismissive? Amused, and not in a good way? Daniel couldn’t help but think ‘lean and hungry’ as he looked at the rangy, dark-haired man. He couldn’t begin to guess what was bothering Gent. You’d think more people would just be happy that the SGC had been able to help them—multiple times. Or maybe that was the problem? 

Daniel turned to Jonas. “Uh, maybe I should have a look at those stones.”

“Sure. I just need to see if the foreman finished something.” Jonas turned to Masera. “How did it go? Did Alex have the workers put the extra shoring in place?” 

“They’re almost to the door–and, yes, the crew wasted most of the morning with the extra shoring.” He spoke abruptly and offered no further information.

“Masera—”

“You’re in charge, Jonas. I did all the research that got us here, I have seniority, but you’re in charge. You can have the crew do what you want, and you can bring in all the outsiders you want.”

Jonas took a breath and looked away, his mouth tightening. He looked back to Masera. “We need you here, and we can really use—”

“What? Someone from another world to make sure we don’t make mistakes? Past errors held over our heads?” He turned to stare at Daniel. “What do you really want here, Dr. Jackson? What are you hoping to gain?”

Jonas frowned at Masera. “Daniel’s here because I invited him, and he’s here to help. Blame me, if you like, but…. We talked about this.” 

Gent looked like he thought this was all pretty funny. The rest were watching with morbid fascination, onlookers at an accident in progress. 

Daniel’s mouth pulled into a grimace, and he looked away. This was unpleasant. Jonas couldn’t be enjoying having him hear this. “Jonas, why don’t you just point me toward the stones?”

Glancing away from Masera, Jonas nodded, then pointed across the compound. “Okay. They’re in that tent.” I’ll be with you in a minute.” 

Giving Jonas a sideways glance, Daniel nodded and crossed the open area between the tents to the one that had been pointed out. The door flap was open, providing light, as were two window flaps. A wooden table stood in the center of the room, with a number of good sized stones on it. Daniel let his pack slide from his shoulders and bent to examine them.

Siltstone and shale. Faint markings, carving—mostly worn away. He picked one up and looked at it closely. Phoenician. Okay, that actually made some sense from a purely linguistic perspective. The non-Greek elements in the Kelownan writing could be Phoenician. That was interesting—and puzzling, since Phoenician was in use so much earlier than the Greek on which Kelownan writing was based. 

Had Thanos had been raiding Earth earlier than they’d thought? It was possible. Maybe the hostility between the three cultural groups went all the way back to a Greek population being brought to a world where Thanos already had slaves. Or was another Goa’uld here before Thanos? He made a note to ask Jonas about evidence of pre-existing cultures, or different tribal groups on the continent.

_Yzkur_ …. ‘Remember’. He put the stone down carefully and picked up another. _La calem_ …. ‘No peace’. Hmmm…. Replacing it, he picked up the next stone. _La cakab_ …. ‘No rest’. This wasn’t sounding very good. _Malak_ …. ‘Possess, reign, or rule….’ Possess what? ‘Ruler’…. Thanos, or some local leader? He picked up the last rock. _Leil mot_ …. Uh oh. That really didn’t sound good—‘night death’.

Opening his pack, Daniel took out a notebook and jotted down his translation. 

He heard stiff fabric of the door flap rustling, but didn’t look away from the stones—it would be Jonas. “This is Phoenician—an early form. I’ve been wondering about the presence of another culture—” He turned and saw the strained expression on Jonas’s face. “Oh, uh…is everything…okay?”

Frowning, Jonas, walked over to the table and looked down at the stones. “Masera’s unhappy. I guess he just wants to be clear about that.” He picked up one of the stones and ran a finger over the carved symbol. Putting the stone back in its place, he looked at Daniel. “What were you saying about other cultures?”

“Uh, I was wondering if there was any evidence of another culture here, predating your own people. There are non-Greek elements of your language that could have derived from this. Have you found anything to support that?”

Jonas shook his head. “Not specifically. Some pottery with anomalous elements, but it was attributed to cultural evolution. No examples of writing. If there was another culture, they must have died out or been assimilated pretty quickly—and it can’t have been a large population, or a well established one. We would have found more. So, what do they say?”

Pointing to each stone, Daniel recited their meanings, pausing when he reached the last. He lifted his eyebrows and looked at Jonas, tapping the final stone with a finger. “And here’s my personal favorite…night death.” 

“Night death? What does that mean?”

“I’m guessing nothing very good, but I’m not sure. The word _Mot_ is actually a reference to the Phoenician god of death rather than the concept and since, in mythology, Thanos—or Thanatos—is a god of death and mortality…. Well, actually a ‘daimon’. Those are supernatural beings, between gods and mortals in power. It could easily refer to minor Goa’uld.” 

Daniel slid the notebook into his pocket. “As for the ‘night’ part, the Phoenicians shared the idea that the underworld is a place of darkness with the Egyptians, but they probably thought that you stayed there, instead of journeying through it into the afterlife if you did things right.” Daniel waved a hand, bringing himself back on track. “Anyway, both cultures thought night was result of the sun’s daily journey through the abode of the dead. It could be some kind of reference to the underworld, but it would be an odd one. I guess it’s a good thing I brought the mythology books—maybe I’ll find something there.”

Jonas raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You got a lot from a few stones.”

Daniel gave him a quick smile in return. “If I was talking to Jack, I would have said, ‘it’s about Thanos,’ and left it at that.” 

A short, dark-haired man came into the tent, sweating in the heat and streaked with dirt. He muttered something to Jonas who raised a hand and gestured for Daniel to follow. 

About a hundred yards outside the camp, Daniel got his first look at the excavation site. He pulled up at the edge of a pit and looked down. A sloping ramp of packed dirt led down twenty feet below surface level to the buried structure. The ramp was as wide as the front of the building, somewhere around forty feet, and shored up by timber on the sides. Dirt still covered most of the building, leaving only the front face of the structure exposed. It was impossible to say how far back the building extended. 

He tried to imagine how the lab or whatever this was could have been buried so completely. Assuming that the structure had once been situated in a small valley—which must have been the case since the ground above it was more or less level—it would have taken heavy equipment, or an awful lot of people working very hard. He looked at the workers here, taking a rest now, leaning on shovels, squatting on the ground, or gathered around the front of the building. It was being uncovered manually—it could have been covered the same way. The landslide theory… Well, the undisturbed surface area surrounding the dig seemed awfully flat. 

The structure looked like it was made of sandstone, a remarkably short term material for the Goa’uld. They built for millennia. Sandstone wasn’t something that would have lasted this long in such a preserved state if it hadn’t been buried. On the other hand, it had been in a valley, sheltered from the wind. Not from the rain though, and while it was hot and dry, Kelowna wasn’t a desert like Abydos. His lips tightened. Like Abydos had been… 

Daniel frowned and focused on the building again. It was remarkably free of ornamentation, too, restrained in a way that he hadn’t seen in previous Goa’uld structures. He had the impression of a temporary and utilitarian structure, for all it must have looked like a palace to the human population of the time.

He walked down the ramp and joined the group standing in front of a huge stone door. As he reached them, moving through the workers gathered around, he saw a wide pile of stones about five feet high, and almost as wide blocking access to the entrance. The dirt that had once covered the area was packed tight between the stones. 

Everything about it looked deliberate—manmade. The stones themselves had the rough, raw edges of natural rock, but the placement, the lack of variation in the size of the stones…they differed from the general fill rocks. Not granite or limestone, he judged, but the same siltstone and shale on which Phoenician symbols had been carved.

Eldon Masera waved an arm at the excavation crew that had been on shift. “Just move the stones to one side and examine them there. Nothing will be damaged by moving them—not that there’s any reason to think you’ll find anything. We’re within hours of getting inside.” 

Scowling, Gent stepped closer to Masera. “We can’t just throw them to one side. Besides, this isn’t for you to decide, is it, Eldon?” He gave Jonas a sharp look. “You’ll agree with me on this—right?" 

“Well, I think I do—and for more than just procedural reasons, but I’d like to know what Daniel thinks about this. It’s a bit odd.” Jonas looked back at Daniel, his eyebrows raised. 

Daniel frowned at the pile of stones in front of the door. “I’m really not so sure this building was covered by accident. The surface above the site is entirely level, like the area was… filled in, rather than randomly covered. This wall, or whatever it is, looks like it was built to block the door, which supports the idea that someone wanted to prevent access to the building. Maybe we can find something to explain it.” 

He looked away from the stones to Gent and Masera. “I’d like to examine the stones for writing and tag them as to the order in which they were removed. They might be significant.”

Jonas nodded to the man who’d come to get them. “I agree. There might be more here than meets the eye.” 

Masera glared at Jonas then shot a disdainful glance at Daniel.

Well, that hadn't won him any friends. Daniel moved to the front and looked at the top of the pile. Grabbing a brush from one of the worker’s hands, he carefully swept the dirt off the stones on the top of the pile. He glanced at Jonas. “If the stones you found above were markers of some kind, related to the structure—” 

“And the building was buried on purpose?” Jonas took another brush, nodding his thanks to the man. Moving around the pile to the side, he cleared the stones that were out of Daniel’s reach. 

“There might be a connection.” Leaning forward, Daniel peered at a stone. “Here’s something, I think.” 

“A connection between these and the ones on top.” Jonas grinned. 

Pushing himself away from the pile, Daniel turned to the crew, handing the brush to the nearest worker. “The stones should be removed one at a time, labeled, and examined for writing. Separate any like that. And save the dirt in buckets, so you can sift it later for small objects.” 

Daniel looked away from the stones to Jonas and the two researchers. He wasn’t all that surprised to see that Masera's frown had tightened. It did surprise him that Gent looked almost as irritated, until he realized that he’s just told everyone how to do their jobs. But the worker to whom he’d handed the brush, the same dark-haired man who’d come to get them, was smiling and nodding. He reached out to shake Daniel’s hand with a firm grip in keeping with his muscular build. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Jackson. Alex Karos, I’m foreman of this crew. Jonas speaks very highly of you. I can see why. We’ll clear the entrance as you suggest. Anything else you’d like us to do?” 

“No, that’s it. That will be good.” 

Letting go of Daniel, Karos nodded again and looked at Masera, who gave a tight shrug. The foreman shot Jonas a grin and moved away from them, shouting orders to the crew.

For hours, they worked on the primitive, but intentional mass of rock. Jonas, Daniel, and the workers carried the stones to the top of the ramp, where they were tagged, cleaned, and sorted by the Langaran archeologists and researchers. The heat of the day meant they had to take frequent breaks for water, but Daniel was used to working in the heat, and if the weather was typical of Kelownan summer, so were the Kelownan workers. At one point, they took a break when food was brought to them. Daniel sat down in the shade cast by a side of the ramp and ate his bread and cheese, hungry in the way that only comes with strenuous labor. 

When they’d gone back to work, and removed more than two-thirds of the pile, Daniel heard Karos calling them back to the entrance. Daniel put the stones that he carried next to those previously removed, and jogged down the slope. The removal of the last few stones had revealed an expanse of tattered cloth from within which bones and desiccated scraps of flesh were visible. 

Daniel exchanged a glance with Jonas. “That’s a surprise.”

A slim woman with long brown hair tucked behind her ears pushed through the crowd and crouched beside the partially uncovered remains. “This is a wonderful find! Just excellent!” She stood and started giving orders to the workers as to how to free the body from what now appeared to be a burial, a finger jabbing forward to emphasize her instructions.

Jonas looked at Daniel. “Jola Simms. This is her thing. When she’s not working on Goa’uld artifacts with Masera, anyway. She’s Andari, and they’ve been working together since…well, since way before that kind of collaboration was common. Except when things got really ugly between the Andari Federation and Kelowna, of course.”

Nodding, Daniel waved a hand toward the camp. “Where do you want to take this?” 

“The tent where the surface stones are. The table should be long enough. Simms can examine it there.”

“Okay, I’ll clear the table and get my camera so I can document this.”

Daniel went back to the tent and pulled a video camera from his pack, then moved the rocks from the table. By the time he got back, the rest of the rocks had been moved away and he was able to film the remains—a body wrapped in what was left of a heavy shroud. 

Masera and Simms slipped two wide boards under the body, with the help of Karos, and Simms waved a hand at two of the workers, indicating that the body was ready to be moved. She was clearly eager to examine the remains. 

By this time, the sun hovered neared the horizon, and the workers of the excavation crew had slowed their efforts. A worker occasionally stumbled carrying the stones to the top of the ramp. Jonas glanced at the few scattered stones remaining. “Let’s move the last of these and call it a day. We can have a look and get some idea of what we might be dealing with.” 

Karos came over to Jonas. “The men are expecting to go back to town tonight for the celebrations.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. Sure, we’ll see you in a couple of days.” Jonas grinned at Daniel. “You’ll like this. There’s a big annual holiday celebrating planetary unity now—kind of like your independence day, I guess.” The grin dropped away. “Things sure have changed, huh?” 

“At least they changed.” That really was good news. If Kelowna could become united, peaceful. Well, anywhere could. Eventually. Daniel smiled at Jonas, pleased for him and more than just surprised—hopeful, on a larger scale than Kelowna. Still, he wasn’t going to hold his breath waiting for peace in the galaxy.

Karos waved his men toward the last of the stones, the prospect of a holiday renewing their efforts.

When the path was clear, Daniel approached the door and looked at the entrance with something like shock. “This is even more unexpected than the body.”

“Wow. Simple. No movable glyphs, no crystals.” 

Daniel lifted his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “A button?” 

Daniel stared at the Goa’uld equivalent of a button, if it was really—ridiculously—what it appeared. A small raised square of metal with an ankh carved on it, in a frame of the same substance. “What kind of metal?”

Leaning forward, Jonas pointed, without touching the square. “Trinium? It looks like someone might have tried to break it. The metal has these little scratches, but the stone around it is heavily damaged from the same blows, so it’s really hard. Not as dense as naquadah, though, or there wouldn’t be any marks at all.” 

Putting a hand on the wall, Daniel leaned closer. “This line of painted hieroglyphs beneath it. They’re surprisingly rustic. Primitive, hastily formed… painted, not carved. They’re almost illegible.”

“They’re not very Goa’uld-ish”

Daniel lifted an eyebrow. “Goa’uld-ish? Well, no… They aren’t.” 

Jonas nodded. “The raised metal—and the ankh—look more like something the Goa’uld would do. The ankh is carefully incised in the metal, and it’s hard enough that you’d need a pretty advanced tool to do that.” 

“I can see Thanos using Greek for some things and Goa’uld for others, but I can’t see him having anything to do with those glyphs.”

“Probably not the Phoenician symbols, either. He didn’t use them anywhere else. There sure were a lot of people writing things out here in the middle of nowhere. Weird.”

“Weirder than the idea of putting a corpse in front of the door and burying a whole building?”

Jonas crossed his arms and stared at the metal square, head tilted. “It just seems too easy, doesn’t it?”

“We’ll lose the light soon. I’ll film the glyphs so we can examine them later. I might be able to make them more readable on my computer.” 

Masera ran down the ramp and across the boards and pushed past Daniel. “This is much simpler than you led me to expect, Jonas! No advanced technology, codes, or traps, nothing like the things you warned us about.” 

“Yeah, that’s kind of the problem. We were just trying to figure out why. The hieroglyphs aren’t what we would expect, either.” 

Leaning close to the wall, Masera peered at the glyphs. “‘Lo, comes forth… awakening’—yes, I think it’s awakening—‘to those of’…something….‘heart’. Probably great heart or something such as that. What’s the problem? It’s as simple as the mechanism to open the door—a mechanism showing the symbol of everlasting life! That doesn’t sound like any kind of trap.” He reached toward the raised square. 

Daniel grabbed his arm. “Wait. We need to think about this.”

Masera shook off Daniel’s hand. “Think about what? Why don’t you want me to open the door? You know what’s in here, don’t you? And it’s something you want for yourself—for your planet.” Masera reached out again. 

This time Jonas stepped between him and the wall, one hand lifted. “The stones we found on the surface look like warnings. We need to take our time and be sure we know what we’re dealing with. No one knows what’s in here, least of all, Daniel.” He glanced at Daniel. “That didn’t sound right. I didn’t mean that you’re… least.” 

Daniel’s mouth turned up as he waved his hands toward Masera, encouraging Jonas to continue.

Jonas looked at Daniel, then back to Masera. “We’re not in any hurry—it’s not like we’re on an occupied world and in danger of attack. We just want a chance to examine this more closely, compare the stones with these hieroglyphs, that sort of thing. Then you can open the door.” 

“And what if you decide it might be dangerous? We just cover the whole thing back up?” He looked at Daniel. “Is that what your people would do? I don’t think so. We aren’t incompetent. Jonas may need you to hold his hand, but if I were running this expedition as I should be, we’d already be inside.” Masera turned and marched back up the ramp, muttering to himself. 

Daniel was astonished to find himself missing the military chain of command.

Staring after Masera, Jonas shook his head. “The high council’s not going to let it stay closed. Not after all this.” 

“No, I don’t expect they will. Not an overabundance of caution there. And, really? I don’t want to leave it closed, either. I just think we need to have a better idea what some of this means, and we have things that might tell us—the new marker stones, this writing, the body….” Daniel pulled out his camera. “I’ll just film this, then take a look at the stones from the burial before it gets dark. Maybe we’ll learn something more.”

They went back up the slope, and Daniel knelt by the newly found marker stones from the pile outside the entrance. They could have gotten the workers to take them to the tent, but only four of the stones had symbols on them, so Jonas had told Karos that he and Daniel would move them. “This is interesting. _Cexer_ …. ‘Gatekeeper’. Maybe the body was buried there as a guardian? Guarding what? _Birr_ …. ‘Tomb’. That seems pretty obvious, but ‘Tomb’ is a strange way to talk about a burial under rocks—a grave, yes, but ‘tomb’ implies some kind of structure, even if it’s only a cave, or a niche carved in rock. Of course, different meanings may have evolved in this culture.” 

He looked up at Jonas “Are you sure this was a research facility, or storage?” 

Jonas nodded. “That was clearly indicated by the information on the data crystal. We think it was both, its main purpose changing over time, and with the construction of the new lab.”

Nodding, Daniel bent over the stones once more. “Well, it’s not like the Goa’uld need tombs. _Leil Mot_ …. ‘Night death’, again. We keep coming back to that, don’t we? And the last one, _qabar_ …. ‘Bury’. I wonder if that refers to the gatekeeper, or the building itself?” Daniel wrote the translations down, and then gathered up the stones.

Jonas stood nearby, looking down at the structure, its entrance shadowed in the light of the setting sun. “You don’t bury a whole building without a pretty good reason.” 

“No…. No, you don’t.”

As they turned away and trudged back to the tent, Daniel glanced at Jonas. “Masera’s translation?”

Jonas shook his head. “And you call me an optimist! He jumped to a lot of conclusions.” 

“Well, he doesn’t care much about determinatives. I can think of other things that might say. It’s interesting that the writing was so small, and basically crude—painted on, not carved. Like an afterthought.” 

“I’m really bothered by that button.” Jonas pulled the tent flap open. “It’s like they wanted _anyone_ to be able to get in—almost an invitation.” 

After putting the stones down inside, Daniel went to stand next to Simms. Looking over her shoulder, he wondered if anything on the corpse would display the Phoenician elements he’d seen in the stones. 

She shot him an irritated look.

“Oh, sorry. I just….” He moved to one side. “What have you found?”

The tattered cloth of the shroud had been pulled away from the body. She touched a ragged piece lightly. “The fabric is of high quality—probably someone of status, either by birth of profession.”

Daniel waved a finger at a decorative color that had been revealed. “That looks a bit…Goa’uld-ish. Can you lift it up a bit?” 

Simms lifted the collar carefully, and turned toward Daniel. “What are we looking for?”

“Evidence that this was a host. If it was, and the Goa’uld died with him, we’ll see skeletal remains of the symbiote. Or is it her?” 

The lines between her eyes deepened as Simms looked at the corpse. She pointed to an exposed arm. “I haven’t uncovered the pelvic area yet, which will be a clear indicator, but the length and thickness of the arm bones gives us a clue that this might be a male. If you look at the skull, there’s a robust general anatomy and the edges of the eye sockets are rounded. There’s also a pronounced brow ridge. This was quite probably a male.” 

Daniel bent to examine the spinal column. “No skeletal symbiote around the neck. Of course, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a Goa’uld. The symbiote may have survived him. Or killed him in transferring to another host. Is the torso intact?”

Simms pursed her lips. “That’s going to take a while to uncover. You’re interested in whether he was… a Jaffa? That’s what they’re called, right? The soldiers who carry the larval Goa’uld?” 

Daniel nodded.

She bent over the corpse again. “I’ll let you know when I get that far. He is holding something.” Picking up a wooden implement, she pushed back a piece of cloth. There was a something visible, stuck under the skeletal hands, something that wasn’t clothing or shroud. 

Daniel’s eyebrows rose. “A scribe’s palette of Egyptian design. There’s still pigment in the holes in the end. And reeds. Do you have reeds here?”

Leaning in to see the palette, Jonas looked at the writing tools. “We have something we call reeds. I don’t know it they’re the same as on Earth.” 

Simms leaned forward to look at the pigment. “I’ll get Merritt to have a look at this. He might have a better idea of how culturally significant this is.”

“Merritt Doneris," Jonas said, "He’s an anthropologist—cross-cultural pollination of methods and technologies, among other things. If this man was a scribe, he could have made those hieroglyphs.” 

Daniel nodded. “And if the stones we found today bear any relationship to this body, which seems likely given that they were on top of him, he may also be the ‘gatekeeper.’ But it’s hard to imagine a scenario where he writes the glyphs and is brought back later to be buried in front of the entrance.” 

Jonas raised his eyebrows. “Or he’s dying, so he writes the glyphs and is buried where he fell? Along with a pretty big building?”

Stepping back from the table, Daniel lifted a finger. “Third possibility, he’s buried in front of the building, blocking the entrance, when a mountain comes down on top of the whole thing—which isn't actually a possibility since he wasn't crushed. I’m going to have to go with ‘the building was buried on purpose.’ And that the scribe was buried about the same time. Anything else is even more unlikely than our usual level of unlikely.”

Jonas walked toward the door. “That makes it really unlikely.” 

Daniel turned back to Simms. “Thanks, I’m sorry we had to interrupt your work.”

She gave him a brief smile and nod, then went back to gently removing fabric from the torso. “It was no trouble. I’m going to want to know more about the palette, though. I’ll let you know what I find when the torso is accessible.”

Well, this was good…. Academic cooperation. Daniel threw his pack over his shoulder and picked up his bag of books. “Where can I put my things? I’d like to see if I can’t figure out those missing determinatives.”

Jonas led them out of the tent and across the compound. As they walked, Daniel thought about the strange mix of cultural elements in this puzzle—the Greek culture and the surprising elements of Phoenician and Egyptian that seemed at odds with Thanos.

“Wait…” Daniel stopped. “Maybe we should talk to the anthropologist first. It might help. The Greeks didn’t use anything like Egyptian scribal tools, so…”

“It might tell us something important about the gatekeeper. Sure. Let’s see if Merritt’s in his tent. I think you’ll like him. We’ve known each other for a long time.” 

Jonas changed direction and led them to a tent a short distance away. The tent flap was open, so he called, “Merritt? Are you there?” 

A man with shaggy blond hair stuck his head out of the tent and grinned at them. “You brought Dr. Jackson to visit. Come in!" 

Every surface inside the tent was covered with books and papers, spread out with chaotic abandon. Merritt Doneris looked around at the mess. “You can just sit…hmm…there were a couple of stools. Or I can just move the papers from the cot.”

Jonas lifted a hand and smiled. “That’s okay, Merritt. I don’t want to mess up your filing system. You won’t be able to find anything for a week.”

“True. Sad, but true.” He stuck out a hand toward Daniel and gave a smile. “Merritt Doneris. Call me Merritt. Any friend of Jonas’s and all. We were at school together. He’s used to my organizational methods, but I’m sure you’re appalled.”

Daniel shook the offered hand. “Uh, Daniel… My methods aren’t that much different.”

“We discovered a body—a man—buried in front of the structure.”

Merritt looked at Jonas and smiled. “Really? Simms must be thrilled—in a Simms kind of way.” 

“There was an artifact buried with him—”

“I have a picture of something like it, I think.” Daniel put the bag of books in front of him and rummaged around until he found the volume he was looking for. He located a picture of an Egyptian scribe’s palette and passed the book to Merritt Doneris. “Have you ever seen anything like that?” 

Merritt examined the picture . “No, I can’t say that I have. What is it?”

“It’s a set of tools for painting hieroglyphs—Goa’uld writing. Not what the Goa’uld would use, but something that was in use on my planet around the time of the Goa’uld occupation.” 

Daniel reached out to take the book, but Merritt pulled it out of reach and flipped through the pages. “This is fascinating. Can I borrow this? Just until tomorrow. Simms will want to see it, too.”

Nodding, Daniel fastened the bag and stood. “I won’t need it tonight. Thanks for your help.”

“What help? I couldn’t tell you anything.”

“That tells us something.” Daniel picked up the bag and left with Jonas. It was fully twilight as they emerged from the tent.

Jonas looked toward the large tent which once again was giving off the smell of cooking food. “Eating would be good. I’m hungry." 

“I brought MREs—skip the group dinner? I’d like to get to work right away.”

Jonas tilted his head. “You brought MRE’s? Why?”

Daniel shrugged. “Things happen.”

Leading them between two tents to a row on the other side, Jonas asked, “Did you bring any Chicken Tetrazzini?” 

“I think so…”

“Good, I like those.” 

“No one likes those—or any, really.” 

“Someone does—me.” Jonas stopped at another of the tents and opened the flap. Inside, two center poles held up the tent, leaving room for two cots, one on each side, and several small stools. A small table stood set off to one side with a lamp on it.

“This is nice….” Daniel moved into the tent and put down the books.

Lighting the oil lamp, Jonas said, “We could have brought generators, but power and supplies are still tight. We’ve been rationing since Anubis’s attack, and rebuilding has priority. I tried arguing about that, since they all know how important it is to find out more about what the Goa’uld did here. Not knowing enough almost killed everyone, but….” He shrugged. “No exceptions. Especially for someone on the council. It would look bad. On the plus side, oil lamps are very portable.” 

Daniel shrugged off his pack and leaned it on the unused cot. He opened the top, took out a stack of MREs and put them on the bed.

Sitting on the other cot, Jonas watched him unpack. “What did you mean, ‘things happen?'”

Daniel turned to Jonas with a quick smile. “I don’t take things for granted anymore. There’ve been too many times when we were delayed, or stuck somewhere—and those were the good times. Things don’t always go according to plan, so now I plan for plan B.” 

Jonas’s eyebrows rose as Daniel pulled out his holstered Beretta, and put it down next to the MREs. “That seems a little on the negative side, but okay. I guess I don’t take anything for granted, either. I brought zats. We collected a few off Anubis’s Jaffa.” 

“One good thing, anyway.” Pulling a package from the pack, Daniel took it to Jonas and placed it in his hands. 

Jonas looked at the package. “You didn’t actually bring any clothes in that pack, did you?”

Daniel shrugged. “Two sets of BDUs don’t take much space. This is from Sam and Teal’c—Sam said something about the miracle of poly-cotton blends. And laughed.”

Pulling open the wrapper, Jonas grinned. “Black t-shirts! They don’t shrink. Ever! I love that. And Teal’c sent _The Weekly World News_ , a whole bunch of them…. They’re very funny—especially the stories about aliens.” 

Daniel went back to his cot, pulled out his laptop, and sat on the bed, cross-legged. He grabbed an MRE and put the entrée in the flameless heater. He watched Jonas read the tabloids while the meal heated. Apparently, the sinking of the Titanic had been caused by the presence of a cursed sarcophagus, complete with mummy, which had been stolen from a tomb in Egypt. Princess Amen-Ra? That just couldn’t be more wrong.

Opening his entrée, Daniel said, “Jonas… this afternoon, when you asked my opinion…” 

“I kind of put you on the spot, didn’t I?” Frowning, Jonas closed the paper and looked at Daniel. "I was interested in what you thought, especially about the door being blocked deliberately, and I wasn’t thinking about egos. That’s…one thing I really miss—the mission coming first.” 

“They think that’s what they’re doing. And there are a few egos at the SGC.”

Jonas opened his MRE and started preparing his main course. “I know. It’s just not the same.”

Daniel tried to think of a helpful response, but there really wasn’t one. He wouldn’t want to do what Jonas had done; leave SG-1 to help people who’d branded him a traitor, even if they had changed their minds. But…some things just had to be done. In a way, Daniel was doing the same thing right now, helping people who’d branded him a saboteur. They'd changed their minds there, too, but only because Jonas had gone up against them. Well, the whole thing had a nice synchronicity. In any case, he wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been Jonas who had asked. 

No…. That wasn’t true. This was interesting, and it might be something important. Even if this wasn’t his favorite place in the galaxy, he wasn't able to resist an archeological mystery. This was something out of the ordinary—Goa’uld ordinary, anyway. And Jonas was right. It was like they wanted any illiterate passerby to be able to open the door. His instincts told him that was a bad thing. 

Turning back to the computer, Daniel ate while studying images of the glyphs he’d taken that afternoon. Several hours passed before he looked up again to see Jonas sitting on a stool, books of Phoenician spread out around him. 

Daniel passed his notes on the hieroglyphs to Jonas. “Well, I might have something here. The first line is Masera’s translation— _iw peret reswet nety neb werent ib_ , ‘lo, comes forth awakening to those with stoutness of heart’…. But, I think this is a more probable interpretation— _iw peret reswet nety neb as ib_ , ‘lo, comes forth nightmare to those with impatience’, which ties in with the Phoenician symbols on the stones. I think it’s saying that opening the door is a rash act that will have…less than ideal consequences. And given how extreme a means they seem to have used to prevent entrance….”

“There’s something more than just bad in there.”

Daniel took back the notebook. “Yeah, I think so. Especially when we look at it in combination with the Phoenician symbols on the stones.”

“So, the scribe was connected to the Goa’uld in some way, or at least knew what they were up to and left a warning. For whom?”

“Anyone, everyone, the people who buried him. There’s no way to know." 

Jonas picked up his books and stacked them on the table. “If you’re right, if the building was buried on purpose, and if the man we found wrote the warning, then someone took it very seriously. Do you think they buried him there as a mark of respect, or because they really thought he’d be a kind of gatekeeper?”

“The Phoenicians did a lot of trading with the Egyptians, picking up some of their burial practices. It’s possible they believed that he would continue protecting them in the afterlife. If these were Phoenicians, as the writing would indicate, we still don’t know how they got here—”

“Jonas? Dr. Jackson?”

Daniel turned toward the door and saw Jola Simms at the open tent flap. She stepped into the tent. “I just wanted to let you know that the stomach tissue was desiccated, but intact. There’s no sign that the man we found was a Jaffa. He seems to be entirely human. There was something else, though. I was testing some bone samples. There was no naquadah to indicate the former presence of a Goa’uld, but I found traces of naquadria radiation.” 

The notebooks on Daniel’s lap fell to the floor. 

Jonas glanced at him, and he glimpsed the kind of sympathy he’d hoped not to see on anyone’s face again. Simms looked puzzled. He really didn’t know what to say. That was an immense over-reaction. She had said ‘traces.’ She wouldn’t have said that if…. He bent down to pick up his notebooks. 

Jonas asked the question that was hanging in the air. “So, these traces, are they enough to cause damage? You’ve been handling the body.”

“No. I’m fine, we’re all fine. It’s probably what killed him, though. I took samples from the soil around the structure, just to be safe. I found no traces of radiation there. If anything inside was radioactive, it would have penetrated the stone. Whatever it was that caused the radiation that killed our poor fellow, it didn’t happen here.” 

Daniel looked down at his notebook and carefully smoothed a bent corner. “That’s…good to know. Uh, thanks for checking. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’ll let you know if I find anything else.” With a nod to them both, she left. 

Jonas had a hand on his hip and was rubbing his head as he watched Simms leave. He glanced at Daniel, his mouth pulling down and his brow furrowed. 

Daniel thought he was probably trying to think of a way to segue from radioactive accidents. “It sounds like the gatekeeper might have been caught in the fallout from the blast that destroyed Thanos’s lab.”

Sitting, down, Jonas said, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s—it seems like a good bet. The lab was a long way from here. You have to wonder how he got here.”

Daniel winced, then turned away. Now his thoughts were going places he didn’t want to go. “I’m going to do some reading about Thanos, the mythological one. Maybe there’ll be something there that will point us in the right direction.” 

“Anything I can do to help?”

“No, I’m just not ready to sleep yet. Don’t let me keep you up.”

“That’s not going to be a problem. Moving rocks is harder work than council meetings. More fun though. That’s just sad, isn’t it?” 

*********************************************************************

Daniel balanced on a portable stool and turned a page of the book that lay open across his knees. He didn’t know how much use Greek mythology would be, but it couldn’t hurt to have a look. Thanos…. ‘A corruption of Thanatos, the god of non-violent death’. But non-violence, even in terms of death wasn't something usually attributed to a Goa’uld. It must mean something else, assuming these myths had some basis in fact. 

He glanced at Jonas—sound asleep. Daniel looked back at his book and tried to concentrate, but his eyes wouldn’t stay open. It took effort to bring his hands up to turn the pages. His chin dropped to his chest, and he jerked his head up. Pushing his hand under his glasses, he rubbed his eyes. Why was he so tired? It was only about eleven o’clock, Colorado time. Readjusting his glasses, he looked at the page again and blinked. ‘Son of Nyx’…. The page blurred—Daniel blinked again, trying to clear his vision. ‘Primordial goddess of night’… He couldn’t do it. He had to sleep. Standing, he placed the book on the stool, then stretched out on the cot and closed his eyes. 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Darkness. Total darkness…. And a silence so profound as to be terrifying. A complete absence of sensation.

No, there was smell. Smoke. Smoke with the aroma of incense, like that Shyla had burned, but stronger. Cloying…sweet, but wrong. There was something…wrong about it. 

Smoke, stinging his eyes and catching in his throat, thick enough to taste. A thought teased at him, but he couldn’t focus, couldn’t…. 

He found himself drawn forward, against his will, through the darkness, unseeing, blind. His legs moved even though he knew something was wrong. Stop…. Stop. It’s important. Stop! He couldn’t fight it, although his legs shook with effort as he resisted.

Guilt rose in his throat, as thick and strong as the smoke. 

This is what he deserved. He wasn’t strong enough. He hadn’t done enough. It was never enough. He would always fail. It was too late. He'd let everyone down…. 

No! That wasn’t true. He tried to silence the roar of blame. This was wrong. I’ve done the best I could. I tried…. I’m trying…. 

_Not good enough…not good enough…not good enough. Weak._

Further into the dark. Alone in the dark. No…. Not dark. Not totally. An open brazier, dim coals, smoke... 

_This is what you deserve. You aren’t strong enough. You haven’t done enough. You will never do enough. You will fail—you have failed. It’s too late._

Dread…. Heart pounding in his chest, he coughed, choking. A fragment of memory…. Think, Remember. Remember—what? 

Sweat…. Heat…? No—fear. Cold sweat on his forehead, running into his eyes He blinked, salt stinging his eyes. The sound of his pulse pounded in his ears. The only sound in absolute silence. Alone…. He'd let them down. 

Who had he let down?

_You let them down._

No…. Not true.

A shape was barely visible, looming in the dark, deeply etched with symbols that were unreadable but which spoke of something more corrupting than the cloying smoke that filled his lungs. A sarcophagus.

He fought even harder to keep from moving—then he was there, transported without taking a step. Disgust…fear…anger, stronger than reason, nauseating…. 

The lid swung open. ‘No!’

He grabbed the side in an effort to stop, muscles staining to fight the force possessing him. The top edge of the sarcophagus dug into his side as he battled for control, as he was pulled in. 

_You aren’t strong enough…. You haven’t done enough…. You have failed…. You will always fail._

He held on, arms stiff, jaw clenched with effort. Heart pounding, he knew—somehow, he knew—that if he got inside, he would.... 

‘No! This isn’t….’

The force dragging at him won and he fell forward into the sarcophagus. Flinging himself onto his back, his chest tight, breath catching and then escaping in a choked cry, he reached for the side—reached to pull himself out, but the sides began to slide shut. He lifted his hands and pushed, but it didn’t even slow them down, the space between them grew ever smaller until only his fingers could fit. 

He pulled his fingers in at the last second and the two sides met with the dull ring of a broken bell. 

_You will always fail._

Scrabbling at the lid, he looked for some way out. The sound of raw, panting breath grew louder than the pounding in his ears. He tried to calm himself, to control his heaving lungs, but the dread and terror increased. 

_This is what you deserve._

Smoke filled the sarcophagus—incense, thick, sweet—the smell of death. Coughing, gasping for air, his throat closed tight. He couldn’t breathe…. He swung his fist into the lid as hard as he could, the unyielding surface cutting his hand, blood running down his arm. He swung again and— 

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Daniel gasped for air. Where…? 

The stool lay next to him, his book beside it. The tent… He was in the tent, on the ground. He'd rolled off the cot as he'd fought to escape his nightmare. No sarcophagus. He wasn’t trapped, wasn’t choking. But he was having trouble breathing. Turning onto his back, he gasped for air, tightening his hands to stop them from shaking. Ow. He brought up his hand. A jagged cut ran down the side, bleeding, but shallow. A sharp edge on the stool? 

Rolling his head to the side, he looked at Jonas. Still sleeping. 

Daniel couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a powerful nightmare. He couldn’t ever remember having one so vivid. Well, the dreams from Sha’re and Shifu—and the Blood of Sokar, but that was different. And it was so far from…. He didn’t think anything like that…did he? He hadn’t done enough—that was true. Daniel’s stomach felt hollow and heavy as he remembered his crushing disappointment—the realization of how little he’d be allowed to do when ascended. He didn’t remember everything, but he remembered that sick, helpless feeling. The context wasn’t clear, but the feeling was etched in his memory. The horror he’d felt when Teal’c told him about the destruction of Abydos, that was still…. But it was never too late. Too late for Abydos, yes, but there were millions for whom there was hope. Millions who could be saved. Anubis could still be destroyed. Daniel shrugged off the strangeness of the dream, deciding that his mind was just putting research and memories together in strange ways, maybe because he was back on Kelowna.

Running his hands over the stubble on his jaw, he frowned. He could still smell the smoke…. The cloth at the tent’s opening moved, caught his eye and he lifted his head. Nothing there… Daniel pulled himself to his feet. His muscles ached as though he’d truly been fighting to stay out of a sarcophagus, to escape. Opening the tent flap, he looked outside. 

It was still dark, but the horizon was beginning to lighten. There was no movement or sound. Daniel moved back into the tent, bent to pick up the stool, then retrieved his book. Poor book—hard usage. Closing it, he put it next to the cot, glasses on top, and lay down. Sleep didn’t seem appealing—he’d just lie there and rest until Jonas woke. 

**********************************************************************

“Daniel. Wake up.” A hand on his shoulder shook him lightly. “Daniel!” 

Opening bleary eyes, he blinked. “Huh? Jonas?”

“Sorry, it’s early, but I thought we’d better figure out what we’re going to tell the others before they get up.”

Sitting up, Daniel swung his feet off the cot and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Ah. I don’t know, Jonas. Let’s not tell them anything… yet. Well, we should tell Gent about the translations of the stones. I’ll give him the books on Phoenician so he can confirm it for himself.” He dropped his arms and squinted at Jonas. “Do I smell coffee? Real coffee?” 

“Surprise. Walter sent it through when I was arranging things—did you know there’s bureaucracy around getting you places?” Jonas handed him a mug. 

“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.” Daniel took a sip and closed his eyes, letting out a sigh. He opened them again and looked at Jonas. “I have my own bureaucracy?”

“They probably multi-task. There are a lot of people to annoy. How late did you stay up?”

“Not that late. I had a strange dream. I think it was about the translations…sort of. Is the sun up?” Stretching his back, Daniel balanced the mug in one hand. 

“Just. I didn’t sleep all that well at first, either. Should we blame it on the MRE’s?”

“You didn’t even wake up when I landed on the floor.” 

Jonas raised his eyebrows. 

“Active dream—not important. What’s that look?”

Jonas was frowning at him, well, not at him, into space. “Don’t you think that’s a bit weird?” 

“Everything that happens to us is a bit weird. Besides, it’s hard to draw any…conclusions from having a dream, even a bad one.” He reached down, picked up his glasses and put them on. 

Jonas took a couple of bananas out of the bowl and tossed one to Daniel. He looked down at the fruit in his hand. “Do you have nightmares a lot?” 

“No more than the next person who fights pseudo-gods on a regular basis…. Okay, it wasn’t a very… normal nightmare. I just don’t see how it could possibly be meaningful.”

“Neither do I—but it’s…interesting.”

Daniel didn’t actually think it was, but that might have been because he was too tired to find much of anything interesting. 

Jonas still looked worried. ”Remember what you said about not taking things for granted, Daniel? This might be one of those things.”

*********************************************************************

As Daniel walked down the wide ramp toward the entrance, Jonas’s voice stopped him. “The door’s been opened.”

Glancing at him, Daniel asked, “What? How can you tell?” 

Crouching in front of the entrance, Jonas touched a finger to the soil. “Look here. The door swings outward.”

“You saw that from the top of the ramp?”

Jonas didn’t answer. He stood and turned away, his head dropping forward. After a moment, he turned back. “Masera. I knew he resented not being in charge of the expedition, but I didn’t expect this. But why isn’t he here telling us how much smarter he is than us? Let’s check the tents. If he’s not there….”

Maybe it was just a lingering feeling of…dread from the dream, but Daniel didn’t think they were going to find Masera in the camp. He followed Jonas anyway, away from the structure. “I’ll get the weapons and catch up with you.”

“The zats are in the locker under my bed. I’ll start with Masera’s tent.”

With the work crews gone, the camp was unusually quiet. Daniel took his holstered Beretta from the bag under his cot and fastened it to his belt, the familiar weight oddly comforting. He would have worn it all along, as he usually did off world, but with his complicated history with the Kelownans, and since no one else was carrying a weapon, he’d thought it might have given the wrong impression. 

He took a flashlight from his pack and the zats from the box under Jonas’s bed, where he also found that Jonas had a slightly different but recognizable Kelownan flashlight. He saw Jonas approaching and handed him a zat and his flashlight, then asked, “No sign of Masera?” 

“No, and I can’t say anyone was very happy with me waking them. They’re going to keep looking, though.” 

“Well, so much for approaching this cautiously.”

Jonas gave him a smile. “That would have been a first, anyway.” 

By the time they got back to the structure, the sun was higher in the sky, shadows darkening the marks left by the door. Daniel looked at Jonas, eyebrows raised, then pushed the raised ankh. The door swung open. “The door was closed. If Masera is inside, then—” 

“It might have closed by itself, if he didn’t do something to trigger it.” Jonas nodded. “I'll go in.” 

Jonas stepped into the doorway, the light from his flashlight cutting a swath through the darkness. The only thing visible inside was a large, raised slab on a slightly narrower base a few yards from the door. An altar? A work area? Daniel couldn’t tell. Stepping into the room, Jonas approached the altar and went around to the other side, partially obscured. He stopped suddenly and bent down, disappearing from sight, but his voice echoed through the large empty room. “He’s here, Daniel. Dead.”

Standing, Jonas was visible again, and motioned to Daniel. “You might as well come in. If the door was going to close by itself, I think it would have by now.”

Daniel approached, his flashlight trained on the dead man. Masera’s open eyes stared sightlessly at nothing. His lips pulled back in what looked like a silent scream, rigor cementing the expression. “He looks terrified.”

“No visible wounds. I wish— I should have tried harder with him. And I should have guessed that he might try something like this. I shouldn’t have sent Karos and the workers away. I could have had them guard the building. If there’d been guards—” 

“Coming in here by himself…that was really not very smart.”

Jonas looked up at Daniel. “We’ll have to take him back to town and report this.”

“Uh…. Problem. A couple of problems, really. We don’t know what killed him. Maybe it was natural causes, but, it might be a good idea to have some idea what happened before we expose people outside the expedition to this or let anyone else in here.” 

Letting out a sigh, Jonas rose to his feet, and picked up the lamp. “That’s only one problem.”

“Well…let’s worry about the other one later.”

Daniel lifted his flashlight higher. He could just make out the back of the room from this position. There was…something. A cavity in the wall? He didn’t see any obvious threat, nothing that might have caused Masera’s death, so he moved toward the back wall. 

“What is it?” Jonas joined Daniel, the light from the second flashlight further illuminating the hole in the wall and widening the area of visibility. 

The cavity was actually a raised panel like the one Osiris had accessed at the temple in Egypt. It was empty. No visible controls or objects. “There’s nothing here now.” Daniel looked at Jonas. “We don’t know what kind of defenses may have been activated when Masera opened the door. We should probably limit contact with the others for eight or nine hours, the time between when we last saw him and now. Just in case. If we’re going to get sick….” 

“I’ll have to tell the rest of them what’s going on.”

“I’ll keep looking for…something that will explain this.” 

“Daniel, no. I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

“Jonas, I need to—”

“It feels really weird to pull rank on you, but I’m in charge of this dig, and….” Jonas shook his head. “I can’t let you do that. And you know General O’Neill would kill me if I did.”

Daniel looked away and frowned, but he didn’t argue. Much as he’d like to get started, Jonas was in charge. He put the lamp down by the entrance, leaving it lit, and followed Jonas out of the building, eyes watering in the bright light. Reaching into a pocket, he took out his sunglasses and clipped them to his frames, then lowered himself to the ground. Daniel picked up a stick and flipped it between his fingers. “I’ll stay here. The less contact we have with the others, the better.” 

Jonas handed him the flashlight. “I’ll be back soon. And stay out of a range that would allow transmission of… anything.” He gave an apologetic wave and went up the ramp.

Digging the stick absently into the dirt, Daniel looked around the site and wondered who had buried the gatekeeper? Had they thought the sacrifice of someone could protect them from the afterlife? Whomever had done all the things to keep others out also seemed to have worked hard to make sure their work wasn’t undone—the warning by the entrance and the second warning left on the surface. What had the people who'd buried this place known? 

But the entrance itself had no safeguards whatsoever. The Goa’uld who had designed the building—Thanos, most likely—seemed to have left it easy to open. That virtually guaranteed a trap of some kind, but there was nothing here, just a dead man in an empty room.

Of course, it was possible that Masera’s death had nothing to do with the Goa’uld. That was the second problem he’d mentioned, but hadn't told Jonas. It could be academic or political rivalry gone too far. He didn’t want to suggest that someone here might be a murderer, though—not right now, not without some proof. Actually, there was a third possibility. Someone here might be a murderer and a Goa’uld, although with no sarcophagus, that possibility seemed pretty remote.

He looked at the soil beneath his hand and saw that he’d been…doodling. Writing unconsciously, and in Phoenician. _Leil Mot_ …. ‘Night death.’ 

He should contact the SGC. If he didn’t, Jack was going to…. Daniel dropped the stick and took off his glasses, rubbing his tired, scratchy eyes. He really should check in. But the 'gate was five hours away, and since they needed to maintain a quarantine for eight or nine hours, he wouldn’t be able to leave for at least another three hours. That would be thirteen or fourteen hours round trip, plus maybe an hour in the city. Too much could happen here in that time. He gave his glasses a swipe on his shirt and put them back on. No matter what Jack would think, any kind of reports would have to wait. 

If the situation had been different, he would have asked the Kelownan officials to dial the 'gate at pre-arranged times, or the SGC could have set that up, and he’d have been able to report from here, but… He couldn't ask that of them, not when he was here on his own time as a consultant, not when it would mean asking to take over another world’s Stargate at regular intervals. Not with the delicate balance of power in the new government. It was just too easy to upset things on this world, and if the Andari and Terranians thought the Kelownans were colluding with the SGC in some way, it wouldn’t be good.

Besides, the last thing he wanted was for a contingent of Marines to show up, gung-ho and ready to save the day. There were enough bad feeling caused by the presence of one archeologist on this world. The Kelownans would resent what would seem like a takeover of the dig, the Andari and Terranians would suspect an agenda against their interests. It might even undermine Jonas’s standing, in terms of his loyalties, and as the leader of the expedition. 

No, progress had been made to the point of Kelownans celebrating peace with a national holiday. It would be truly ironic if he was the one who messed it up. Without knowing more, there wasn’t much to report anyway, just a dead scientist—unknown causes. 

Hearing footsteps, Daniel looked up to see Jonas returning, carrying a blanket. 

“I asked them to leave some water at our tent. And a pot of coffee. I don’t know what that will taste like, but I figured you’d rather have bad coffee than none…. They’re upset. And scared. They know about the naquadria radiation on the corpse, and with Masera dying” 

“Radiation didn’t kill him. Not that fast. Besides, Simms would have detected it when she took the soil samples.”

“They all want to leave right away. I had to promise we wouldn’t ask anyone to stay past tomorrow morning.”

Daniel dropped the stick and stood, turning on the flashlight. “I don’t think it was some kind of disease, but just in case…. I’m more concerned about why the door was closed.” 

“I wish I didn’t know what you’re not saying.” He paused and looked at Daniel. “Let’s pretend I just said that better.” He pushed the ankh and the door opened once again. 

They covered Masera’s body with the blanket. There wasn’t anything else they could do until they knew it was safe to leave, and on a grim, practical level, this was the coolest place in the camp. 

Starting on each side of the door, they began a methodical examination of the walls. There wasn’t much to find—minimal ornamentation, no writing except for a section Jonas found by the door, declaring Thanos’s greatness. What was unexpected was that the rest of the walls weren’t covered with variations on the theme. Daniel was starting to think this was the Goa’uld equivalent of a woodshed. 

After an hour, they had worked their way around the room, meeting at the back wall, and had discovered nothing about how Masera might have died. While Jonas re-examined the open, empty panel, Daniel returned to the altar and stared at its empty surface. What was this for? It was the only thing in the room other than the cavity in the wall.

He crouched down and aimed the flashlight at the lower part of the altar, along the base. 

Jonas joined him, sitting a few feet away and moving the lamp to light the area. He slid over and pulled the lamp after him, and then his voice lifted with urgency. “There’s something here! Writing—very close to Kelownan.”

Daniel moved toward him, lighting the area. 

Jonas touched the writing on the altar. “I did some study of ancient Greek on Earth. It’s a lot like Kelownan in some ways. ‘Death dreamer—In dreams, truth and death’?” 

“Almost. The first word has the same root as death, but it’s actually ‘immortal’— _Athánatos_ , and the second word is also ‘dreams’, but it’s the nominative, or vocative plural…. So, something called dreams, not actual dreams. _Athánatos oneiroi—En onéirois, alétheia καὶ thánatos_.” Daniel frowned. _Oneiroi_ ….

“Immortal dreams—In dreams, truth and death.” Jonas looked at Daniel. 

Daniel raised an eyebrow. “It sounds like a Goa’uld bumper sticker, doesn’t it? That can’t be right… _καὶ_ can mean a number of things, depending on the context. None of those would change the meaning, though. I have books back at the tent that might have something.” He pulled his camera from the pouch on his belt and filmed the inscription.

Jonas stood, his gaze passing over the walls, the cavity in the back, the altar in front of them, before going back to Daniel. “I’m not seeing anything else. Let’s go back to the tent. You can have a look while we wait out the quarantine. We should know by evening. Whatever killed Masera happened pretty fast.” 

As they walked through the camp, some of the expedition members gathered to watch them pass by. Daniel noticed they kept their distance. He didn’t blame them, in fact, he approved, but it would have felt like a death march if he hadn’t been so certain that Masera’s death had somehow been violent. He wasn’t sure why he thought that, maybe just the naked fear that remained on the man’s face, even after death.

Jola Simms stood in front of her tent, arms crossed. Even from a distance, Daniel could tell she’d been weeping. When she saw them, she wiped her eyes and gave a nod. He thought it was intended to be encouraging. Reynold Gent just watched them pass by, a deep frown on his face. 

Jonas glanced at Daniel, as he shifted his shoulders like a man feeling a target in his back. “Not a disease, right?”

**********************************************************************

Daniel took several books on mythology from the table and carried them to his cot, pulling his legs up on the bed. He thought he remembered something from Greek myths that referred the _Oneiroi_ , and he'd transcribed the inscription from the video into his notebook, which lay open beside him. The pouch on his belt was uncomfortable while sitting, probably because it was never intended to hold a zat, so he took it off and laid it on the floor beside the bed. 

The problem with tents and cots was there was nothing to lean on. It was tempting to lie down, just for a minute… No. Bad idea. It had been a long, sad day that had started with too little sleep, but he’d been fine until a few minutes ago, then—exhaustion. He was tired, but he wanted to get this done. The inscription might shed some light on Masera’s death, or at least give them a clue, and figuring it out was something he could do, stuck in this tent until evening. 

He put most of the books beside him and opened one on his lap.

Thánatos, the daimon personification of death and mortality, merciless and indiscriminate. Son of Nyx, or night, brother of Hypnos—the personification of sleep... Daniel sensed a growing theme. Sleep, night, death. He didn’t know what it had to do with a dead man in an empty building though. Daniel blinked to clear his eyes. 

Ah—here was something. Hypnos had three sons, each personifying a type of dream occurrence. The _Oneiroi_. The most powerful of these _Oneiros_ was Morpheus, who created the dreams as a whole, while the other two sons, Phobetor and Phantasos, crafted parts. Morpheus shaped human figures, Phobetor animal, while Phantasos shaped inanimate objects. 

Mythology wasn’t reality, so what did this represent? Could they have been Goa'uld? Could one of them have ended up here? There was no record of that on Kelowna, and the Goa’uld didn’t tend to keep low profiles. They wrote their names on everything. But it was possible. Maybe that panel had held a canopic jar, an imprisoned Goa’uld? That didn’t seem likely. Jonas had read all the reports while he was at the SGC, and Daniel knew he’d shared information about Goa’uld artifacts with the Kelownans. They knew what canopic jars might mean. No, not ‘might’. Egyptian burial practices weren’t used on Kelowna. Here, the only purpose of a canopic jar would be to imprison a Goa’uld. Masera had been annoying, but there was no reason to think he wasn’t as competent as he’d insisted he was. He knew the building had been used by Thanos—he would have been cautious. Well, somewhat cautious. He’d gone in there knowing there were concerns.

Daniel closed the book and put it on the floor. 

The warnings, they all seemed to be saying the same thing. A warning not to open the structure, death, nightmare, night death, dreams. 

He needed to figure this out fast. If this was a Goa’uld trap, they needed to know what it was, so something could be done before it was triggered again. If it wasn’t…. Well, he didn’t want Masera’s murderer to leave with the rest of them, free to escape into the population of Langara.

Daniel took the books from the bed and put them on the table. Maybe, maybe, maybe…. All he had were questions. And he could hardly stay awake. As he bent to pick up another book, another wave of exhaustion swept through him. His eyes closed against his will as he collapsed onto the table and slid to the floor. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Floating…. Darkness…. No. Space. Stars. Galaxies. Distant life. The hands that stretched in front of him didn’t look like his. They were translucent, transparent…. He was insubstantial. Unreal…. A ghost. Apart. Alone…. Why was he here? How? 

A planet came into view. Abydos…. His throat tightened, and the planet blurred as his eyes filled with tears. Abydos. There was one thing he was sure of—Abydos was gone. The planet remained, but the Abydos that had been full of life, that was gone. He hadn’t saved Abydos. He couldn’t save Abydos.... It was in front of him, but the people no longer laughed. The children no longer played. Gone like Sha’re…. 

Gone.

Then he was closer, light years closer in a fraction of a second, the planet’s colors reminding him of traveling over the shifting sands, the clay that made the mud brick of the buildings. The sun, and the wind, and the scents of the air.

A beam of light shot toward the planet, meeting the surface with a bright flash, a red glow at the point of impact that started spreading. Then he couldn’t see anything. The surface was completely obscured by heavy clouds as the debris hit the air.

Daniel knew what was behind those clouds. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. A crater hundreds of miles wide, melted rock and eruptions, ash spewing into the atmosphere. The coming of something so close to nuclear winter that it made no difference. It was the end. 

Tears ran down his face, cold against transparent skin. Lungs that held no air tried to force out a scream, but no sound emerged. He was letting it happen again… 

_You haven’t done enough…. You will always fail...._

This was worse than anything he’d allowed himself to imagine. All gone… Nothing but his sorrow remained. His pointless, meaningless sorrow. His failure…. 

_You failed. You failed them all._

He fought back against the overwhelming surge of despair. No! He’d tried. He would have succeeded. He knew that was true in the same way he knew that beneath the clouds the surface of Abydos boiled and froze. It was the Ascended. They had stopped him…. He hadn't failed. He hadn’t! He would have….

_You didn’t save them. You opened the gate. They died because of you. You bring death. You cause destruction. You deserve to die. Like Abydos…. Like Sha’re._

The anger leeched out of him, replaced by horror as he looked at his lifeless home, despair flooding back. There was nothing left. No future. Why was he still alive when the people he’d loved were gone? When everything was gone, mastages and lizards, tough desert plants with unique, spare beauty, all gone. All life and history wiped from the planet as though it had never existed. When he had failed again and again….

_Everything you promise is a lie._

Cold. Unimaginable cold. He looked down at his numbing fingers and saw that he was regaining his form. Color, substance….

No longer ghostly, his lung strained for air—air that didn’t exist in the vacuum of space. He tried to bring his hands up to his throat. Instinctive. Futile. He strained to move, struggled to breathe, panic overcoming him. 

Move….

Run….

Escape….

Live! 

Bone-deep cold stiffened his limbs as his vision dimmed. 

Cold.

Blackness.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A stinging blow hit his face. “Daniel…. Daniel! ” 

Pulling in a deep, rasping breath, Daniel bolted upright, lifting numb, clumsy hands to his throat. 

Dropping the hand that was raised, poised to slap him again, Jonas grabbed Daniel’s shoulder and pressed his fingers to the pulse in his neck, “You weren’t breathing—I was about to start CPR. Are you okay?” 

Lungs heaving, gasping for air, Daniel couldn’t talk.

“Your hands….”

Still struggling to get his breathing under control, Daniel held his hands out. Red with frostbite—and his fingers stood out, very white. Frozen on the hottest of summer nights. Agonizing pins and needles spread up his fingers to his hand, signaled thawing flesh. 

The dream—freezing in the cold of space…. Abydos. Daniel dropped his head and blinked back tears. Ignoring the pain in his hands, he pushed himself off the floor and stumbled toward the open door. “I…. I have to….” 

“Are you all right?”

“No!” Daniel’s voice came out a rough croak, the lump in his throat making it hard to speak. He stopped. Clearing his throat, he turned back to Jonas. “I just…. I…need a minute. I won’t go anywhere. Jonas—don’t fall asleep! Don’t lie down. Don’t…” He turned back to the door and stumbled outside, hands held up in front of him.

He took a deep breath, then another, forcing himself to be calm, reminding himself that nothing had changed. Abydos had been gone for over a year…. Another deep breath of the warm night air. Hot days, the long warm nights…. If he felt sand under his feet instead of dry grass, he could imagine…

The dream flashed through his mind. The beam hitting the planet's surface, the devastation rushing across Abydos. His stomach clenched and he wanted to walk, blindly, without destination. He couldn’t. They’d agreed to stay here until dusk, and it wasn’t quite…. Daniel dropped his hands. His frozen fingers hurt, but it was lessening, going with the dream.

As he paced in front of the tent, the pain in his fingers fading, he managed to push the rage that shook his body away, to put the memories of Abydos back in the part of his mind that was reserved for the most terrible failures, the irresolvable feelings, the unbearable. 

He needed to talk to Jonas.

Daniel lifted the tent flap, and saw Jonas slumped over the small table. “Jonas….” He should have realized that the tiredness he’d felt wasn’t natural, wasn’t resistible—he would have, if he hadn’t still been feeling the effects of the dream. 

As Daniel bent down to wake him, he saw the marks on Jonas’s arms, red, spreading, deepening into wounds like… radiation burns. He grabbed Jonas, pulling him upright and shaking him. The stool tipped over. He couldn’t hold onto Jonas with his still clumsy fingers. Jonas fell to the floor—still not waking, red burns spreading…. Skin thinning, splitting…. No, no, no…. This wasn’t happening.

“Jonas! Wake up! Damn it! Wake up!” Daniel’s stomach knotted, his breath caught in his chest. He grabbed Jonas’s shirt and shook him again, hard enough to lift him off the ground. “Jonas!”

Opening his eyes, Jonas stared at him. “Daniel. You’re alive.” 

“Yes, I’m alive.” Daniel helped him into a sitting position. He stared at Jonas’s arms and face, at the burns and open sores.

Jonas blinked and looked at him, unfocused. “I got there first, this time. I always try, but this time I got there first.”

As Daniel watched, the burns stopped spreading—skin stopped thinning, splitting, then slowly began to knit—far too slowly. He let himself fall back onto the floor from where he crouched next to Jonas, shaking with relief. He took a deep breath then helped Jonas off the floor and over to his cot.

“Sometimes I…dream. About that day. The naquadria. I try and get there first, but I never do.” Jonas looked down at the slowly healing skin on his arm hazily. “This time I did.” 

Daniel sat on his cot. “Uh….”

After a few minutes, Jonas started to look more present, aware of his surroundings, aware of what he’d just said. He frowned and stared at his feet. 

“Jonas—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Neither do I, but….”

Jonas glanced at Daniel. “I really don’t want to talk about it.” 

“Well, if—”

“Look, I know you told me we’re even—I believe that. Mostly. But…it was my city at risk.” Jonas turned his head, staring at the wall of the tent. 

“We were all at risk.”

“I just watched.”

“Well, sometimes ignorance is…helpful. I didn’t know what would happen, not really. You did. If I’d had any idea….” Daniel’s mouth twisted. “It would have been a lot harder—maybe impossible. I don’t remember doing a whole lot of thinking, but I’m pretty sure that dying wasn’t one of the things that crossed my mind.”

“That’s my point, Daniel. It didn’t even occur to me to try. If I had—”

“You’d be dead right now, instead of both of us being alive. I had friends in high places. Jonas, it all comes down to you knowing more about the naquadria. Our minds won’t let us do things that we know are…too horrific. You knew. I… didn’t.” 

Jonas glanced at Daniel then back to the cloth wall. 

Daniel hoped he was getting through to him. This was much worse than Jack blaming the Kelownans in a general way, and he’d thought they were past this. Long past. “Besides, you didn’t have any field experience. I did. It’s something that takes some time. After a year with SG-1, you pushed me out of the way of a staff blast and got shot yourself. You didn’t hesitate then—you saved my life. I thought we…. Well, I thought we sorted this out back then.” 

“We did. But, that training let me do what you do naturally. I read the reports. I know what you did on you’re first time through the ‘gate—taking that staff blast that was meant for the general.” 

“All that proves is that I don’t have a very good grasp of reality. I didn’t think I was going to die then, either.”

Jonas raised his eyebrows and looked at Daniel. The sores were almost gone, although he was still covered with red burns. 

Daniel lifted his hands. “Why does everyone think I walk into situations trying to get myself killed?” 

“Can you really tell me that you didn’t expect to die any of the times you died or almost died?”

Rubbing his forehead, Daniel thought back over the last eight years.

Jonas shook his head. “It’s not a question that should take this long to answer.” 

“It’s not a question you should have to ask. Okay—once. When I went up to the Gadmeer ship, when Jack was getting ready to blow it up. There was no clear solution, and I didn’t know if I would be able to find one, but I had no other choice. That wasn’t so much nearly getting killed by an enemy, as nearly getting killed by Jack.” 

Jonas shook his head. “I wasn’t even counting that one.”

“Not as painful as some, but that was the only time. Apart from that, I can honestly tell you that there wasn’t one occasion when I thought I would die. Well, when I got shot on Apophis’s ship—but that was after the fact.”

Jonas managed a lopsided smile. “Maybe you really don’t have a very good grasp of reality.”

Daniel was pleased to see the smile, even a strained one. “Jonas…these nightmares… both of our nightmares, it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Not exactly, but…. Osiris manipulated my dreams to get information. And this is a little too close for comfort.”

Pushing himself off the bed, Jonas nodded. “We should go back to the building. There has to be something there that will tell us why this is happening.” 

“The Oneiroi inscription wasn’t very helpful, but I think might be a reference to other Goa’uld. We might not be dealing with Thanos at all.”

They left the tent, into the hot evening air, the camp still and silent. About halfway across the compound, Jonas stopped. “We have to warn the others to stay together and keep each other awake. People will be in the tent where we serve food. They like to work together in there in the evenings. We can get them to spread the word.”

Daniel followed Jonas to the large tent from which the smells of cooking had arisen earlier.

Inside, stood a number of tables, with stools around them and books spread put across the tops. Gent and four other people, none of whom Daniel recognized, lay collapsed over the books. 

Approaching Gent, whose face was twisted in fear and pain, Jonas felt for a pulse. He shook his head. “We’re too late.” 

Daniel reached down to the dangling wrist of another researcher. A formality. All five were dead, killed by something that Daniel thought had almost killed him tonight—a dream, a nightmare. Night-death. How many more of this large expedition lay dead in their tents? 

“We need to check the tents, warn the ones who’re still alive.” Jonas pushed open the flap, but Daniel reached out a hand to stop him. 

“We need to get to the building more. This won’t stop until we make it stop.”

“You can’t be serious! Daniel, you—”

Daniel raised a hand impatiently, his palm toward Jonas, cutting him off. “I didn’t say you shouldn’t tell anyone!”

Jonas took a deep breath. “Right. Okay.” He turned away, his gaze sweeping the compound. Raising an arm, he pointed to a man approaching through the tents. “There’s Merritt.”

They jogged toward Merritt Doneris who gave a wave when he saw them. “Jonas, Daniel… Glad to see the quarantine was for nothing. Did you find out anything more about that palette?” His gaze drifted to the still visible marks on Jonas’s skin. “Jonas! What—”

“I’m okay, but more people have died, Merritt. I need you to check the tents. See if everyone else is all right. And tell them not to sleep. They have to stay together and keep each other awake.” 

“Died? Jonas, what’s going on? What difference does it make if—”

“Just tell them, Merritt! I’ll explain later. There’s no time now. Daniel and I are going back to the building to figure this out. Get someone to go with you; it’s not safe to be alone.”

Still staring at Jonas, Merritt shook his head and left. 

Daniel watched the man disappear between the tents, and then looked at Jonas. “The people in that tent weren’t alone.”

“No, but they didn’t know what was happening either. It’s all we can do.” Jonas rubbed his cheek. “It’s getting worse. Five people, all at the same time.” He looked back at the tent. “Wait—five people…. Masera was alone. Even when we were together only one of us was targeted. What changed?” Jonas frowned at Daniel. 

Daniel stared out across the camp. His mind raced through what they knew. “Whoever designed that entrance wanted anyone to be able to get in. Why?” 

“So they’d do something? Find something? Open something? The only thing we know was opened, for sure, was the door—and maybe the panel at the back of the room.”

“The warnings….” Daniel’s hands cut through the air as he spoke. “Maybe they didn’t just mean ‘don’t go in here’. Maybe they were literally about the door. What if opening the door was the key? What if it triggered something? Made something happen?” 

“We didn’t see anything when we went in. Just Masera. No equipment, no weapon, no trap…nothing. Maybe the door closing turned whatever it was off again? Or did we do that when we opened the door?" 

“I think…we’d better find out.”

When they got to the building’s entrance, Jonas frowned. “There’s no good way to do this, is there?

Daniel pushed the ankh and the door swung open. “Close the door behind me, then open it up again in one minute.” 

“Daniel, that’s—”

“A really, really bad plan? I know, but one of us has to be inside to see if the closed door triggers anything. And I think we’re not going to live much longer if we don’t find out…something.” 

Jonas shook his head. “Then I’ll go in.”

“No. You’re better, but—”

“Daniel, I’m not going back to the SGC and telling them I let something happened to you! Again!” 

Daniel stepped through the door, his gaze on Masera’s covered corpse. He turned back to face Jonas. “Close the door, okay?”

“Daniel….”

“Jonas.... Just…close the door.”

Jonas stared at him. He took a deep breath. “Daniel, you’re—”

“Yeah, Jack’s worse, though. Close the door.”

Shaking his head, Jonas reached for the button. “Thirty seconds. That’s it.”

The door swung closed, and a bright blue light shone down from the ceiling onto the altar. No, not just light, something else. It sparkled like some kind of energy field, not completely transparent. The room was illuminated, but the beam itself ended at the edges of the altar. Daniel walked to it and reached out a hand. It was impenetrable. Warm, but not hot. His finger tingled when they came into contact with the beam. If it was what he thought it might be, this was not good. Not good at all. He heard the door open, and the beam disappeared, the room now lit by only the small amount of light coming through the door and Daniel’s flashlight. 

“It’s a bit of a leap, Jonas, but I think this is a bit like a sarcophagus, only without—” He turned toward the door and saw Jonas stumbling forward, pushed from behind.

“Daniel! He’s a—”

A backlit figure lifted a hand and a stream of golden light knocked Jonas across the room.

Daniel couldn’t see who it was, just glowing eyes in a shadowed face. Where was his zat? In the tent? He pulled the Beretta from his holster and brought it up; taking aim at the same time the ribbon device was aimed at him. It burned into his mind, sending agony along every nerve. All his will went into pulling the trigger. He managed one shot, the sound echoing off stone walls deafeningly, before collapsing to his knees. 

The paralyzing pain flickered, then stopped, residual effects lit up nerve endings throughout his body. He pulled himself to his feet, weapon held in front of him, and approached the figure on the ground, illuminated by the light from the door. Oh, Damn. Merritt Doneris. He was still alive, thankfully, although a bullet to the chest at close range… 

Hearing a noise behind him, he glanced over to see Jonas limping forward. “I think he’ll be okay. We can get him to the Tok’ra.”

Jonas stopped beside him, rubbing his knee. “Merritt, a Goa’uld… I was busy telling him off for being out alone when he aimed that ribbon device at me.”

“Did he say what his name was, the Goa’uld, I mean?” 

“Phobetor.”

“Ah.” Daniel holstered his gun then crouched down, taking the ribbon device off Merritt Doneris. The crystal was a deep purple that he hadn’t seen before. He handed the device to Jonas. “This looks different somehow.” He searched Merritt’s pockets, finding a data crystal and another device that like it was meant to hold the crystal. He held up the device. “I wonder if this reads the crystals. We’ve had to use Goa’uld computer technology, but maybe…?”

Jonas’s eyebrows rose. “A Goa’uld PDA? That would be handy.” 

“I hope so. I think we better find out what’s on here right away. What did he do with your zat?” 

Jonas turned the ribbon device over in his hands. “Merritt…Phobetor, made me drop it outside, along with my flashlight. I’ll go get it.” 

The light from outside was suddenly blocked, and a deep, echoing voice filled the room. “Don’t bother.” 

They stood just outside the threshold, the setting sun bright on their faces—a woman whom Daniel had started to think of as a friend, and a man he hadn’t expected to see again at all. Jola Simms and Alex Karos. Each held a zat, and each wore another of the strange ribbon devices on the left hand, one with a yellow crystal, the other with one so dark it looked black. 

Daniel slipped the crystal and its maybe-reader into his pocket. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. He had tried to suspect everyone, but Simms’s grief had seemed genuine. Maybe it had been. Maybe the Goa’uld had let its host’s grief show. But he hadn’t suspected Karos. It hadn’t even occurred to him that the foreman might have returned, or might have never left the dig.

Daniel’s mouth twisted. “Morpheus and Phantasos, I presume?”

The Goa’uld in Simms spoke, voice reverberating, eyes flashing gold, “Kneel before your Gods.”

Jonas stared at them with a smile on his face. “Thing is, I’ve got this sore knee…” 

That was a very Jack-like phrase, and smile. Giving Jonas a glance and a nod, Daniel stood and pushed his sliding glasses into place. “And I just don’t like you.”

Karos—Phantasos—turned to Morpheus, the Goa’uld in Jola Simms. “This is a waste of time. Let us kill them so we can heal Phobetor. All three devices must be adapted and functional if we are to take the Chappa’ai.”

Morpheus kept her—his—eyes on Daniel. “No. You are rash, Phantasos, as always. We are not at full strength or health, and Phobetor’s host is badly damaged. We may not be able to repair the body. If that is the case, he will need a new one—one of these.”

“Then let him take a new host now.”

“That would delay us further. It is you who waste time, Phantasos.” Morpheus gestured with the zat. “Put your weapon on the floor, Dr. Jackson.” 

He moved his hand toward the holster with no intention of dropping the gun. The two Goa’uld aimed their weapons at Jonas.

Morpheus, the Goa’uld in Jola Simms, spoke again. “If you do not obey, we will both shoot Jonas Quinn. He will die. Do as I say.” She smiled and raised her ribbon device. “Or we could play in your minds again.”

“Daniel, don’t!”

Slowly taking the Beretta from the holster, Daniel bent and laid it on the floor. He didn’t feel good about this, but if the Goa’uld planned on keeping them alive, it would buy some time. And if he didn’t, Jonas wouldn’t have any time at all. 

Morpheus aimed the zat at Daniel, while Phantasos raised his toward Jonas. 

Daniel’s muscles tightened, his most basic instincts telling him to fight or run. Was he wrong? Did the Goa’uld really intend to kill them both?

They fired. 

************************************************************************************************

Daniel opened his eyes, then squinted, the light intensifying a pounding headache—not the light of the oil lamp, but the bright blue glare of the energy field. The door must be closed again, which meant they were trapped. 

He lifted his head from the floor with effort. Every muscle ached and there was a tingling sensation in his limbs like he’d touched a live wire. Being zatted so soon after the ribboning has done him no good at all. At least it had only been the regular ribbon effect, not whatever these did that distorted their memories and forced them into nightmares. 

Looking around, and trying not to move his head much while he did so, he saw Jonas sitting up, rubbing the heels of his hands into his temples. Daniel let his head drop back to the ground. “My flashlight’s gone.”

“I guess they thought you might try to hit them with it.”

“They were right. I see they left us an oil lamp. That was nice of them.”

“It probably wasn’t on purpose.”

Gritting his teeth, Daniel rolled onto his side and pulled himself into a sitting position. Standing wasn’t a possibility at the moment. “I don’t suppose you know a way to turn an oil lamp into an offensive weapon?”

Jonas’s mouth pulled to one side. “I could throw it at them. But I don’t think nasty burns are going to do the trick.”

“No, I suppose not.” Reaching into his pocket, Daniel pulled out the data crystal, and the device he’d found with it. “Let’s see if we can read this.” He put the crystal in the device and a small screen lit up. “Okay, this is good. It works.”

“So what’s it say?”

“Well…. Um…. A lot. It’s a record, started before the explosion in Thanos’s lab. It looks like the three Oneiroi—that’s Morpheus, Phobetor, and Phantasos—were here to do something for or to Thanos. I’m not sure what, but I think they were some kind of…assassins…. They were caught in the explosion, their hosts incurably damaged by radiation, as were all the others within reach.”

“Why didn’t they just find new ones?”

“That would be the ‘as were all others within reach’ part.”

“Right. Okay.”

“They knew this lab was abandoned so they came here with their Lotar—that’s the scribe, I think. They built the…” Daniel waved a hand. “Energy thing.”

“That’s what it says? Energy thing?” 

“No. It says a bunch of stuff about molecular decay and…. Ah! Sarcophagi! The simple entrance was so that potential hosts could gain entrance easily. They could open the door—like Masera did—which would lower the field, freeing the Oneiroi.” Daniel paused and looked at Jonas. “The Goa’uld would be vulnerable at that point, not having the mobility provided by a host, but they move surprisingly quickly and over a greater distance than you’d expect.” Daniel thought about the speed with which the primordial Goa’uld on P3X-888 had attacked. “Bit of a risk, but it’s not like they had better choices. It was that or die from radiation poisoning. With the altar being the only thing in here, the hosts were likely to come right to them.”

“I guess their Lotar had a change of heart about helping them—writing the warning?”

“They did leave him outside to die.” Daniel adjusted his glasses and went back to reading the data. He was silent for a moment as he scanned the information. “The _Oneiroi_ use their ribbon devices to kill, not in the normal way. These are different. They do the normal thing too, though—I can vouch for that. Originally it was just one victim at a time. Undetectable assassination. They were trying to kill Thanos. It takes three devices operating at the same time, one to control sleep, another to bring up memories from the subconscious, and the third to intensify emotions.” He glanced at Jonas then back to the device. “That’s why they needed to heal Phobetor-Merritt…they couldn’t use their weapons without him, not the way they want.”

“But the Goa’uld don’t dream, do they? They don’t even sleep.”

“Maybe that’s why it was effective. I mean, the Goa’uld are…attached…to human minds, they’re capable of dreaming, but they would have to relinquish a measure of control to the host. The device takes away their control, makes them dream and then manipulates their minds. I wonder if the thoughts and memories they bring forward are the host’s, or the Goa’uld’s? Maybe both?” 

“That’s an ugly thought.” 

“Okay, here’s something that explains what they’ve been doing to us. They’re trying to adapt the devices to kill over a broader range—multiple victims. If they’re going to get through the Stargate, they’ll have to take out all the guards at once. That’s it. The rest is just technical notes about the devices.” 

Jonas looked across the room to where Masera’s body lay covered and frowned. “So why is Masera dead? How did Merritt and Simms get taken? I can see Karos being here, helping Masera, maybe. They’ve worked together a lot in the past, but…”

“Merritt wanted to show the book I lent him to Simms, the one about Egyptian artifacts. Maybe she brought him down here to see where the body was discovered, or to see the writing that had been done with the palette. If they were outside, and Karos or Masera called for help, they—”

“They’d run right in here. Both of them.”

“The Goa’uld place high value on the physical beauty of the host, most of them, anyway.”

“Masera wouldn’t have been their first choice—so they experimented on him instead.” 

“Yeah, that seems…. It would explain the look on his face. The dreams.” Daniel pulled the crystal from the reader and put both in the leg pocket of his pants. “This crystal is important to them. It has all their research on it. If Phobetor is healed, he’ll realize it’s missing, and they’ll be back right away.”

“It won’t matter. They’ll be back to kill us anyway. They can’t kill us worse because they’re mad that we read their stuff.” Jonas grimaced. “No, they can—they almost did. They’re still working on those devices. And if they don’t heal him—”

“They’ll be back to give him a choice of hosts.” Daniel pushed himself off the floor, staggering slightly as he straightened. “We really have to find a way to open the door—and fast.”

Jonas stood, a hand on his damaged knee, and limped over to the altar. He looked up at the wide shaft of light coming down from above. “If there’s a way out, I bet it’s here somewhere. So, this is like a sarcophagus?”

“Well, I think it kept them alive, and uses the same technology, but it doesn’t sound like it worked as well as a sarcophagus would have. They said they were weakened and not completely healthy.”

“So it’s sort of like a sarcophagus. And we’re in it. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”

“Just inside the field itself, not…everywhere. The beam is like a tube coming down from the ceiling. You can’t put your hand into it and it only goes to the edges of the altar. The energy is contained. ” Daniel crossed his arms, his shoulders tight. “I know, because… I’d feel it.”

“Oh….” Jonas touched the field experimentally. “Yeah, solid. Sort of.” He walked around to the other side and crouched down, disappearing from Daniel’s view, his voice rising from behind the altar. “And this inscription is about the three Goa’uld. Kind of strange that they work together.” He stood and limped around the altar, looking up at the beam.

“If they were System Lords, it would be, but we’ve seen minor Goa’uld working together—the Linvers. It’s not too big a stretch to imagine these Goa'uld might also be working with each other if they had a good reason. And they must need each other, they took Phobetor—Merritt—with them. If they didn’t need him, they would have let him die. Loyalty isn’t part of their decision making process.” 

“That means they have a healing device.” Jonas pointed at blue light rising to the ceiling. “Wait…. If they have a healing device, why did they need the altar thing in the first place? Why not just heal themselves and their hosts?”

Daniel closed his eyes tightly and tried very hard not to think about anything at all as he answered. Sam had told him she’d tried, but didn’t know how undo all the damage. And Jacob had arrived too late. _Too late_ …. “If they didn’t have it with them—if it took too much time….” Don’t think, don’t remember…. Don’t…. He opened his eyes.

“But if—”

“It doesn’t matter, Jonas!” His voice echoed off the walls. “Sorry…. Uh….” 

Jonas looked at Daniel silently, then said, “Did you dream about—?”

“No. ” They’d pulled the loss of Abydos to the surface, and the sarcophagus, but not…. Daniel’s eyes widened, his eyebrows arching up. He hadn’t dreamed about any of it. He stared at Jonas.

“Daniel? Are you okay?”

“I…. Yes. I am.” He shook his head. “Except for the ‘about to be a host or experiment’ thing. We really need to focus on getting out of here. We might not have much time.”

Jonas disappeared behind the altar again as Daniel examined the side nearest the door.

A dot of blue light appeared and disappeared low on its base. “Jonas—whatever you just did—do it again.” 

“I didn’t do anything, just touched the inscription where it says _Athánatos Oneiroi_.”

“Well, do it again.” 

As Daniel watched, a blue circle of light reappeared, just above the floor. That hadn't happened when they first found the inscription, or had touched it. So why now? Ah, the door had been open before. The field wasn’t active. He stretched out a hand, holding it above the blue circle of light. The circular light on the base disappeared, but appeared on his hand instead. The light was from above. Crouching down, he looked up at the area overhead. He couldn't see anything visible, but…. He touched the spot illuminated by the light and pushed. A small piece of the altar clicked inward, the light went out, and…. Nothing happened. 

“A light just came on over here.”

Daniel stood. “Try pushing it.” 

“We’re just pushing things to see what happens?”

“Do we have anything to lose?”

“Well… No. Okay, pushing it now.”

The bright shimmering light from above went out, leaving the room in near darkness, with only the glow of the oil lamp burning dim in comparison. Daniel rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I was really hoping for something more….”

Jonas reappeared, standing, his weight on one leg. “Maybe we can—” 

The grinding of stone on stone echoed through the room. Daniel looked at the door they had used to enter the room. It wasn’t moving. 

“Daniel, there!”

Turning, he saw Jonas pointing to the back of the room, next to the open panel. On the side of the room furthest away from the excavated entrance, a section of wall was sinking into the floor.

Jonas picked up the lantern and they crossed the room to look through the newly opened door. It was a second room, smaller than the first. What looked like extraterrestrial garbage littered the room; a broken staff weapon, ribbon devices without crystals, not that they could have used those. Goa’uld detritus. 

Daniel frowned at the scattered junk. “This could have been more helpful.”

Walking in, Jonas put the lamp down, touching a piece of equipment on a counter. “It’s not so bad. We were right about this being a lab. It sure looks like Thanos took everything important, but there might be something useful that he overlooked.” He moved to a shelf against the nearest wall and started sorting through junk. 

Picking up a piece of unidentifiable technology, complete with burn marks, Daniel glanced at Jonas out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t say anything. Daniel moved further into the room, examining debris, pushing aside some pieces of what might have been a personal shield, lifting an empty control panel. “The door still doesn’t make sense. Wanting new hosts to get in easily, okay… and I can see that they might want to shut people in here, but you’d think they’d want to be able to shut people in without having to leave the building to do it. Without having to go outside to push the button. The first host would be taken fairly easily, it would be unexpected, but after that there’d be panic, running… That first Goa’uld to take a host, he’d want to shut the door—from the inside—trapping the rest of the victims. So that people wouldn’t be able to use to escape.”

Jonas paused in his sorting of debris, and stared at Daniel. “That’s not something I would have thought of.” He shook his head and went back to sorting. “Something hand held?” Clearing a pile of junk from a table with the sweep of an arm, Jonas dropped an armful of oddments in its place. 

“Waiting for them in that panel, you mean? That would work. It’s probably where they kept the hand devices, too. But they’d still need a back-up plan in case something went wrong. Another way out. They wouldn’t want to risk being trapped.” Daniel moved to the next work area and scrutinized the old equipment and garbage.

“That sure would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? But eventually someone else would come along to push the button, I guess.” Jonas started pulling parts from some of the things on the table. 

“That would be a bad plan.”

“Right. We never go with bad plans.”

Daniel looked at Jonas, a corner of his mouth turning up. “Did you just say ‘I told you so’?”

“Who, me?”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Daniel lifted a sheet of metal off the surface and looked underneath it. Nothing. He looked up and saw Jonas building something, putting parts into improvised metal casings. “What are you making?”

“I found some engine parts, the power sources from a few things and a timer from some lab equipment.” 

“And you’re making…?”

“Things that will explode.”

“Ah. Good.” Daniel looked around the room, scanning the walls. There had to be something important in here, something they hadn’t found. The energy field, the hidden way to open the door to this room…the Oneiroi had done that, not Thanos. Why had they made the way into this room hidden? He squinted at the far wall. It was hard to see in the dim light cast by the oil lamp and he couldn’t move it until Jonas was done. 

So he waited, growing increasingly tense, feeling time slipping away. He wanted to pace, but didn’t. Daniel had been on the other side of this too many times not to understand how irritating that could be. He looked at Jonas. “I know having someone say ‘hurry up’ doesn’t actually make things go faster, but….”

“I’m almost done. I think.” Jonas discarded a piece of crystal and picked up another, fitting it carefully into one of the objects in front of him. He straightened. “Okay, we’ve sort of got some weapons.”

“Sort of?”

“I’m not completely sure they’ll work.” Jonas pointed to the three devices in front of him. “But this one’s sort of a grenade—our kind, not a Goa’uld shock grenade. This one’s a bomb, it has a timer, and…I’m a little worried about this last one. I meant it to be grenade-like, but I’m not sure that it won’t explode as soon as it’s activated. We should probably try not to use it.” 

“Yes, let’s try not to use that one.”

“I’m going to put the bomb by the door, but the timer was a bit broken.”

“Broken. Okay…. Jonas, I need to take the lamp to the far wall. I think I see something.”

Jonas picked up his newly constructed explosives, followed Daniel to the far wall and held the lantern up. As the lantern moved, there was a glint of light reflected off a small metal panel embedded in the stone. This wasn’t an incongruous button like the one at the entrance to the structure. Instead, it looked like a perfectly normal control panel of the type they’d seen outside doors in every Goa’uld ship. The faint line of a door could even be seen, etched into the stone. 

Turning to Jonas, Daniel grinned, elated that they’d found an alternative to a pitched battle by the front entrance. Then he noticed the strained frown on Jonas’s face. He was about to deliver bad news and really didn’t want to. Daniel's smile dropped away. “What?” 

“We’re at the back of the building.” 

Daniel dropped his head. “Right. The building is buried, so the door is buried. Of course, the door is buried.” 

They heard the sound of the exterior door opening, and looked at each other.

Daniel was pretty sure had the same ‘Oh, crap’ expression as Jonas. He grabbed a grenade—was it the one that might explode in his hand or the other one? He really didn’t know. They moved to either side of the open doorway that led back into the main room.

Jonas gave him a nod and blew out the lantern’s flame, plunging them into darkness.

To stand a chance, they had to get into the main room where they had more room to move. Edging around the doorframe, Daniel went into the larger room, grenade held ready. It was utterly dark, except at the open doorway, where the three Goa’uld stood silhouetted against the lighter night sky. One hand touching the wall, he moved closer to the Oneiroi. 

“You are more trouble than you are worth.” 

That was Jola Simms’s voice—Morpheus. 

Suddenly, a bright light came on. His flashlight. The beam swung toward him. Daniel activated the grenade and threw it toward the _Oneiroi_. The loud crack of a gunshot echoed, as deafening as when he’d fired at Phobetor. A bright muzzle-glow flared. Launching himself to one side, he landed flat on the floor, stretched out prone. 

There was no ‘sort-of’ about the explosion. A flash lit the room, then faded to cries of pain. Darkness swelled again, even blacker after the contrast of sudden, blinding light. There had been nothing wrong with that grenade. At least one of the _Oneiroi_ was still alive, though. Zat blasts lit the air around them like lightning strikes.

Jonas yelled, “Stay down, fire in the hole.” 

Metal clattered on the stone floor near where the _Oneiroi_ had stood and Daniel saw a blinking light, the only thing visible in the room—the bomb. 

And…. It didn’t go off. Jonas wouldn’t have set the timer to this long a delay. The zat fire stopped and the light on the bomb blinked once, twice, obscured, then Daniel saw it moving toward him. The metal casing grated across stone. The bomb stopped inches from his outstretched arm, blinking faster now. Daniel scrambled to get his feet under him, to get away. Hands grabbed his jacket and dragged him to his feet, pushing him away from the bomb. 

This blast was much larger than the one given off by the grenade Daniel had tossed at the _Oneiroi_ , and far too close. The concussive wave slammed him into the back wall, the brightness of the light blinded him. 

And Jonas was nearest to the bomb. 

Daniel dropped to his knees and felt his way forward, hands groping in the darkness. He touched cloth. Jonas? Wishing desperately that he could see something—anything, in the blackness of the unlit room, he found a wrist and a pulse. He squinted, now able to make out a dim shape as his eyes adjusted, but unable to determine anything about Jonas’s condition.

Then he could see. Jonas was sprawled in front of him, unconscious, bruised and scraped, but alive. Relief swept through him before he realized why he could see. The flashlight. 

Looking up, Daniel saw one of the _Oneiroi_ still standing, blood running down his face and covering his clothes. Phantasos, possessing Alex Karos, advanced on them, flashlight in one hand, the Beretta in the other. Oh, good. He was about to be shot with his own gun.

Daniel glanced around, searching for the third weapon. He saw it near Jonas's boot. Daniel flung himself toward the grenade and grabbed it. Pushing the button, he threw the makeshift device while still down on one knee. Then he dropped to the ground and covered his head. Jonas had been right about that grenade. It didn’t go off in Daniel’s hand, but it did go off early. But the fast pitch of the device and Phantasos’s forward movement put the Goa’uld and the grenade in the right place at the right time. White light flashed, then a hard boom shook the room. Chunks of masonry flew through the air. One slammed into Daniel’s shoulder, small chips of rock cutting as they hit the exposed skin of his hands and arms. Hunched low, he closed his eyes. He waited until utter darkness and silence fell and then sat up and blinked the dust from his eyes. 

Edging backward until he reached the entrance to the storage room, Daniel felt around until he found the lamp. He lit it, returned to the larger room and went to Jonas, whose eyes were now open. “Asking if you’re okay seems…. Uh…. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I think so, but….” Jonas blinked. “I’m just going to stay here for a minute. Go check on…just go check.”

Daniel went to Phantasos first—Karos. The grenade’s effect had been devastating. Even as a Goa’uld, these were injuries that no one could have survived. Daniel looked down at the body of the man he’d spent yesterday working with, and had liked, the mangled limbs, the horrific gaping wounds. Regret knotted his stomach. Having to kill a host was always bad. Karos could have been saved. 

He pulled the ribbon device off Karos’s arm and bent down to search his blood-soaked pockets, finding a small cube with a button on it. Daniel was sure this must be the way the door could be closed and opened from the inside. He'd known there had to be a mechanism. He wasn't going to push the button and find out, though. The door was open and he wasn’t taking any chances with that. He put the cube in his pocket, then wiped bloodstained fingers on his pant leg without thinking. He immediately wished he hadn’t. 

Hearing a groan, Daniel turned to see Jonas pulling himself into a sitting position, moving stiffly.

“Daniel, is he…?”

“Sorry. I wish we could have saved him.” 

Jonas pushed himself off the floor awkwardly, one leg held straight. “Me, too, but I knew when I built those….” He shook his head.

Morpheus and Phobetor—Jola Simms and Merritt Doneris—lay on the ground near the entrance. Daniel moved toward them with Jonas just behind. Neither of them moved quickly, or well, but Jonas seemed unable to put any weight on his leg. 

When Daniel reached the two other fallen Goa’uld, he saw that while they were in bad shape. They were alive, limbs broken, but not.... The tightness in his chest loosened and he let out a deep breath.

Jonas crouched next to Phobetor/Merritt, bad leg outstretched, and looked from the injured Goa’uld to Daniel. “Can you contact the Tok’ra?”

“I can’t, but the SGC can. I’ll go back as soon as we can get to town. He’ll be okay, Jonas—they both will.”

Taking their ribbon devices with the odd-colored crystals, Jonas turned to Daniel, frowning. “I can’t think of a positive use for these. Can you?” 

“Well, they made us sleep, that could be positive, but…mostly, no, I can’t.” 

The frown on Jonas’ face deepened. He stared at the ribbon devices, then looked at Daniel again. “You take the crystal and the data reader. Give them to Sam. I don’t think my government should have the research on these. You can let me know if there’s anything on there that’s good. Just find them on some other world—for the record.”

“I’m not sure anyone should have that research or that my government is that much better than yours, but…. Yeah. It might be safer if the crystal and the devices aren’t in the same place. Some things aren’t safe anywhere, Jonas.”

Jonas looked up at Daniel, regret in his eyes. “I wish neither of us knew that.”

*********************************************************************

Daniel walked into the Kelownan gate room, past the group of guards, whose presence he now found reassuring. He put down his book bag, leaving the pack on his back, and turned to Jonas. “Well, that was more eventful than I was expecting.” 

“Some of it was fun. Just… not most of it. Sorry, Daniel. I really wanted you to have a good time.”

“I could have done without the nightmares…and the Goa’uld. It could have been worse, though. If they hadn’t taken the time to heal Phobetor, more people might have died. They might have tried another trial run with the devices before coming back to check on us.”

A fleeting smile crossed Jonas’s face. “So it’s a good thing we distracted them by getting captured?” 

“Next time there’s an interesting find at the SGC, I’ll let you know. We can try for a more peaceful expedition. And I’m expecting to find some very interesting data soon—on some other world.” Daniel’s forehead creased. “I really hope some of it’s about the Phoenicians. That’s still a mystery. Anyway, I’ll let you know when we’re going. You should come along.”

Jonas nodded. “That would be good. I’d like that.” He smiled. It was a small twist of his mouth, but he looked more like the man Daniel was used to, not the one who’d spent the last nine hours worrying about friends who were badly wounded, and trying to explain things to the rest of the council. “I’d really like that.”

“You might even miss a council meeting or two.”

The smile widened, and Jonas went to the DHD to dial Earth. 

As the event horizon settled into place, Daniel picked up his bag. “I’ll contact you as soon as we’ve spoken to the Tok’ra.”

“Thanks, Daniel. Even with all this, it was great to have you here. Sort of. You know what I mean.” 

“Goa’uld aside, it was pretty good to be here, and in more ways than you’d think.” Daniel walked toward the gate then turned back, lifting a hand, toward Jonas. “That whole ‘jumping into danger’ thing…. It has its drawbacks, Jonas. Don’t go overboard, okay?”

Jonas just smiled and gave him a wave. “Tell everyone I said hi."

“I will, but you’ll be seeing them soon, yourself.” 

Daniel stepped into the event horizon. As he came out on the other side, the SGC gate room felt more like home than a concrete bunker really should. Jack was waiting for him. 

“Thought you were staying a week? You’re back early. Plain old archeology not exciting enough for you anymore?”

Daniel walked down the ramp. “More exciting than anticipated.” 

“And Kelowna? No big deal? Any demons?”

Daniel gave a start and looked at Jack. “Daimons? What?”

“As in ‘exorcize any’?”

“Oh, metaphor….Yeah, I guess—but none of them were mine…. Okay, maybe one, but.… Uh, we need to ask the Tok’ra to go to Kelowna pick up some Goa’uld for extraction. And I need some coffee—I’ve hardly slept in days. Jonas says ‘hi.’” 

“Goa’uld, Daniel?”

“Three, actually. One’s dead. Along with the host, unfortunately.” He shifted the heavy book bag to the other hand. 

Jack’s eyebrows rose, his face betraying no emotion.

“Oh, and there’s this…” Daniel reached into his pocket and took out the data reader and crystal. He dropped his chin and looked at Jack over the top of his glasses. “We need to find them somewhere else—and I told Jonas he could come along when we do. He wants Sam to take a look at the crystal.”

Reaching out, Jack took the device and crystal. He turned the crystal over in his fingers, staring at it, then at Daniel. “Just how exciting was this little excursion?"

“Pretty exciting, but not unusual—not for us. Well, not unusual for work. It was a bit rough as a vacation.” 

“Yeah, well you can fill me in on the worst vacation ever after they’ve checked you out in the infirmary. I’ll contact the Tok’ra. They can gate to Kelowna from here so the Langarans don’t have a conniption. I don’t think they’d want us giving out their address.”

Daniel nodded and started out of the gate room.

“Daniel?”

Turning back, he looked at Jack. 

“Sorry you went?”

“You know… I’m really not….” Daniel nodded, as much to himself as Jack, and headed out the door. He hoped there was a pot of staff coffee in the infirmary. He could sneak a cup. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

Jack’s voice followed him into the hall, raised to reach him. “Daniel, you are so not going to Kelowna again.” 

Smiling, Daniel kept walking. “What are the odds I’ll find another Goa’uld, Jack? No, don’t answer that.”


End file.
